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MAYNARD'S ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES, No. 228-229 

OF THE CONDUCT 
OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

BY 

JOHN LOCKE 



WITH BIOGRAPHY, CRITICAL OPINIONS, AND 
EXPLANATORY NOTES 



A. LOUISE M. GILBERT 

Instructor in English, Berkeley Institute, Brooklyn, N. Y. 




1 ' OO * I i 



NEW YORK 
MAYNARD, MERRILL, & CO. 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Cqpits Received 

SEP. 23 1901 

Copyright entry 
£ CLASS °^ XXc N*. 
COPY B. 



^ 



COPYRIGHT, 1901, 
BY 

MAYNARD, MERRILL, & CO. 



INTRODUCTION 

Probably no man in England, during the period im- 
mediately following the Revolution, contributed more 
toward the cause of progress and civilization than the 
philosopher, John Locke. The storm in which Locke 
said that he found himself when he came into the 
world was both political and religious. Parliament and 
King, Roundhead and Cavalier, Puritan and Church- 
man were the parties between whom the storm raged 
during the first half of the seventeenth century. The 
beheading of Charles I. in 1649 brought Parliament 
and the Puritans into power; but the failure to main- 
tain the Commonwealth after the death of Cromwell 
brought about, in 1660, the restoration of the mon- 
archy and of the Established Church. It was not alone 
moral corruption in church and state that led to these 
changes. The period was one of transition in English 
thought. Up to the beginning of the century, TEe" 
scholasticism of the Middle Ages was still dominant. 
The learned doctors at the universities spent their time 
in splitting hairs and wrangling over useless questions. 
Philosophy was allied with the dogmatic theology of 
the day, and independent thought was stifled. But the 
time was ripe for a change. Bacon now came and in- 
fused new life into philosophy and science; Milton 
arose as the apostle of freedom of thought and speech; 
the divine right of kings came to be no longer accepted 
without question; the more rational of the clergy tried 



4 INTRODUCTION 

to construct a philosophic religion, while Hobbes, a 
follower of Bacon, brought forward a destructive 
philosophy that at once aroused a storm of opposition. 
A spirit of discontent was abroad. Men were begin- 
ning to desire a better philosophy, a more enlightened 
religion, a truer science, and a freer government, and 
it was into such an environment of national thought 
and life that John Locke was born August 29, 1632. 

Though born at Urington in the north of Somerset- 
shire, it is probable that most of Locke's early life was 
spent in Pensford near Bristol, where his father had 
a small estate. A man of some local fame as an at- 
torney, his father early joined the Parliamentary 
army. This fact alone was sufficient to interest the 
young son in the stirring events of the time. At the 
age of fourteen he entered Westminster School, at 
which time the poet Dryden was also a pupil there. In 
1652 he became a student at Christ Church, Oxford, 
where, it has been suggested, he obtained his first ideas 
of religious toleration from Dr. John Owen, the Puri- 
tan Dean of Christ Church. Locke's life at the Uni- 
versity covered the period of the Commonwealth. 
Though he undoubtedly gained much while here from 
his opportunities for individual thought and study and 
for intercourse with other men, he became growingly 
discontented with the prescribed course of study, espe- 
cially with the methods in logic and philosophy. He 
worked on, however, and secured his degrees of A. B. 
and A. M. and, in 1660, was appointed to a Greek 
lectureship in his own college. The same year his 
father died. 

About this time was written the " Reflections upon 
the Roman Commonwealth," though the work was not 



INTRODUCTION 5 

published until some time after. In this essay Locke 
traced all public ills to the dominance of the priest- 
hood, and he held that the only remedy lay in the su- 
premacy of the state. His ideal was the Roman Con- 
stitution, in which he found but two essentials of be- 
lief — the goodness of the gods and the merit of a moral 
life. 

Locke's interest in science led him to the study of 
medicine, which he hoped to make a profession. Ill 
health, however, prevented him from engaging in reg- 
ular practice, though his skill was held in high esteem 
and his services were often in demand. 

In 1662 he was transferred from the Greek lecture- 
ship to one in Rhetoric, and three years later he left 
the University for his flrst> visit to the Continent, going 
as secretary of an embassy to the Elector of Branden- 
burg. His personal letters at this time are full of 
interest. Nothing escaped his observation and he did 
not fail to tell his friends of what he saw and heard. 
In less than a year, however, he returned to Oxford, 
where his friendship with Lord Ashley soon began. 
Later he took up his residence in London with his 
newly found friend, and here came in contact with 
many of the famous men of the day. 

Through this intimacy he began to be drawn into 
public affairs. Lord Ashley was one of the eight lords 
proprietors to whom the Carolina grant had been made. 
Locke was interested in the plan for colonization and 
became practically the manager of the association. 
The famous Constitution, which has been characterized 
as " the most grotesque curiosity in modern political 
history," has been attributed to Locke; but he was 
probablv author of only a part. It was not long after 



6 INTRODUCTION 

this, in 1671, when the " five or six friends " that met 
for discourse on subjects of mutual interest found 
themselves suddenly face to face with problems touch- 
ing the character of the human mind. The discussions 
that followed led to the beginning of Locke's greatest 
work, the " Essay concerning the Human Understand- 
ing." An account of how the Essay came to be written 
is given by the author in the introductory " Epistle to 
the Reader." 

The condition of Locke's health about this time sug- 
gested a trip to the Continent. After a few months, 
however, Lord Ashley, recently created Earl of 
Shaftesbury, being appointed Lord High Chancellor 
of the realm, called Locke home to act as his adviser 
as well as to fill the offices of Secretary of Presenta- 
tions- and Secretary to the Council of Trade and Plan- 
tations. It was not long before Shaftesbury incurred 
the displeasure of the king, and with his fall Locke 
too stepped out of public office. The freedom from 
public responsibility gave him the opportunity for do- 
ing again what the state of his health demanded. This 
time he took up his residence at Montpellier in France, 
where he remained until 1679, in which year, Shaftes- 
bury being restored, Locke returned to England. But 
he was now destined to share the fortunes of his patron, 
who, being discovered in 1682 in a plot against the 
king, fled to Holland, whither he was soon followed by 
Locke. This land of tolerance was the home of the 
philosopher until his return to England with the 
Princess Mary in 1689. 

During these years in Holland he was free to think 
and study as he never would have been in England. 
Always eager to exchange his thoughts with other men, 



INTRODUCTION 7 

he organized here a literary club similar to the one he 
had formed at Lord Ashley's. Le Clerc, with whom 
he had formed an intimacy, was at this time publishing 
a literary and scientific review, the " Bibliotheque Uni- 
verselle," and to this Locke became a contributor. The 
year of his return to England, the first " Letter on 
Toleration " was published anonymously in Holland. 
This letter, as well as the three that followed, expressed 
a broader principle than the world was yet ready to 
accept. Locke tolerated all beliefs but atheism, which, 
he held, struck at morality, and Roman Catholicism, 
which was in itself intolerant of others. Though he 
spent his life in the Church of England, it is evident 
from his writings that he considered her doctrines 
narrow. 

The " Essay concerning the Human Understanding " 
was published in 1690, soon after Locke's return to 
England. He received thirty pounds for the copyright, 
not a large sum for a work that had been more than 
eighteen years in preparation and was destined to be 
one of the greatest influences in the establishment of 
modern philosophy. Sir James Mackintosh says of the 
Essay : " Eew books have contributed more to rectify 
prejudice, to undermine established errors, to diffuse 
a just mode of thinking, to excite a fearless spirit of 
inquiry, and yet to contain it within the boundaries 
which Nature has prescribed to the human understand- 
ing." 

Locke's aim in the Essay is to discover how people 
acquire knowledge and develop thought. He rejects 
the theory of innate ideas and likens the mind to a 
blank sheet of paper. All thought, he concludes, is the 
result of sensation, or the operations of the external 



8 INTRODUCTION 

senses, and reflection, or the notice which the mind 
takes of its own operations. His reasoning processes 
were direct and simple, and the language of the Essay 
is an exact expression of his own clear thought. Sen- 
tences, however, are frequently loose and carelessly 
constructed, and his evident desire to make things per- 
fectly plain sometimes leads him into wearisome repe- 
tition. He was the first of the philosophers to adopt 
the expression, the Association of Ideas, though the 
thought underlying it had, to a certain extent, been 
made use of by his predecessors. His use of the term 
idea is at times ambiguous, as he does not distinguish 
between the popular and the philosophical use of the 
word. 

The " Essay on the Conduct of the Understand- 
ing," which was not published until after Locke's 
death, was undoubtedly designed as an additional 
chapter to the great Essay. This is evident from the 
author's own notes on the subject. H. R. Eox Bourne, 
perhaps the fullest and most careful of Locke's biog- 
raphers, says of it : " It is a collection of notes for an 
essay or discourse, the notes often repeating one an- 
other, and sometimes not fitting very well together. 
But the incoherence almost enhances the value of the 
work to us, if not as a scientific treatise, as an index 
to the modest, earnest temper in which Locke prepared 
to give his last message to the world as an apostle of 
truth." At one point in this Essay we read, " I am not 
inquiring the easy way to an opinion, but the right 
way to truth." In this brief statement may be found 
the purpose of all Locke's intellectual work and the 
secret of his influence on the deeper thought of his 
time. 



INTRODUCTION 9 

Two " Treatises on Civil Government " were pub- 
lished in the same year as the great Essay. " Thoughts 
concerning Education " came from the press in 1693. 
This treatise was suggested by the interest the author 
took in the education of the children of his friend, 
Edward Clarke. About this time Locke was much in- 
terested in public affairs, especially those relating to 
finance. One of his tracts at this period was on the 
" Lowering of Interest." He felt much solicitude for 
the future of the currency, which was in a very unsta- 
ble condition owing to the practice of clipping the 
coins. Locke's advice was much sought in these try- 
ing times, for, however much his philosophy might be 
criticised, his conclusions in practical matters were al- 
ways found to be wise and prudent. In this crisis he 
urged strongly the minting of coins, and he became 
himself one of the original proprietors of the Bank 
of England. The last public office that he held was 
that of Commissioner of the Board of Trade. This he 
resigned in 1700 and so gave up his active connection 
with public affairs. 

The principal writings of Locke's later years were 
controversial in character. The spirit of the age was 
one of controversy, and it was but natural that Locke 
should feel its influence. In 1695 he published an 
" Essay on the Reasonableness of Christianity." This 
was attacked by John Edwards of Cambridge. Locke 
wrote a " Vindication " of his Essay, which called forth 
an answer from Edwards. This was followed by a sec- 
ond " Vindication " by Locke. 

More famous than this, however, was his controversy 
with Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester. This began in 
1696 and did not close until the death of Stillingfleet 



10 INTRODUCTION 

in 1699. The dispute turned on the Bishop's interpre- 
tation of the Essay as opposed to the doctrine of the 
Trinity. Thomas Fowler, Locke's most recent biog- 
rapher, says of this episode in his life : " There can be 
no doubt that the antagonists were unequally matched. 
Stillingfleet was clumsy both in handling and argu- 
ment, and constantly misrepresented or exaggerated 
the statements of his adversary. On the other hand, 
Locke, notwithstanding an unnecessary prolixity which 
wearies the modern reader, shows admirable skill and 
temper. He deals tenderly with his victim, as if he 
loved him, but none the less, never fails to dispatch 
him with a mortal stab." 

In 1691 Locke took up his residence at Oates, in the 
parish of High Laver. Here, in the home of Sir 
Francis Masham, he was destined to spend the re : 
mainder of his days. For several years he kept his 
rooms in London, where he spent much of his time, 
but Oates was his home. 

His personal characteristics were such as to make 
him always a welcome member of this household. His 
never-failing cheerfulness, his amiable disposition, and 
his fascinating powers in conversation were in them- 
selves sufficient to win the regard of all who came in 
contact with him. After several years of gradually 
declining health, he died at Oates October 28, 1704, 
and was buried in the parish church at High Laver. 

The estimate of two of Locke's personal friends will 
perhaps furnish the best tribute to his character. 
Thomas Sydenham, the eminent physician, said: "A 
man whom, in the acuteness of his intellect, in the 
steadiness of his judgment, and in the simplicity, that 
is, in the excellence of his manners, I confidently de- 



INTRODUCTION 11 

clare to have amongst the men of our own time few 
equals and no superior." Jean Le Clerc wrote of him: 
" He was a profound philosopher, and a man fit for 
the most important affairs. He had much knowledge 
of belles lettres, and his manners were very polite and 
particularly engaging. He knew something of almost 
everything which can be useful to mankind,, and was 
thoroughly master of all that he had studied, but he 
showed his superiority by not appearing to value him- 
self in any way on account of his great attainments." 
No better summary can be given of the character 
and value of Locke's work than is contained in the fol- 
lowing extract from Dr. Thomas Fowler : " Great as 
is the debt which philosophy owes to Locke's ' Essay,' 
constitutional theory to his i Treatises on Govern- 
ment,' the freedom of religious speculation to his 
' Letters on Toleration,' and the ways of ' sweet rea- 
sonableness ' to all these, and indeed to all his works, 
it would form a nice subject of discussion whether 
mankind at large has not been more benefited by the 
share which he took in practical reforms than by his 
literary productions. It would undoubtedly be too 
much to affirm that, without his initiative or assist- 
ance, the state of the coinage would never have been 
reformed, the monopoly of the Stationers' Company 
abolished, or the shackles of the Licensing Act struck 
off. But had it not been for his clearness of vision, 
and the persistence of his philanthropic efforts, these 
measures might have been indefinitely retarded or 
clogged with provisos and compromises which might 
have robbed them of more than half their effects." 



CEITICAL OPINIONS 

No quality more remarkably distinguishes Locke 
than his love of truth. He is of no sect or party, has 
no oblique design, such as we so frequently perceive, of 
sustaining some tenet which he suppresses, no submis- 
siveness to the opinions of others, nor — what very few 
lay aside — to his own. 

Henry Hallam 

The plain directness of his manner, his earnestness 
without fanaticism, his hearty, honest love of truth, 
and the depth and pertinence of his thoughts, are quali- 
ties which, though they do not dazzle the reader, yet 
win his love and respect. 

George Henry Lewes 

Locke's authority as a philosopher was unrivaled 
during the first half of the eighteenth century, and re- 
tained great weight until the spread of Kantian doc- 
trines. His masculine common-sense, his modesty and 
love of truth have been universally acknowledged; and 
even his want of thoroughness and of logical con- i 
sistency enabled him to reflect more fully the spirit of j 

a period of compromise. 

Leslie Stephen 

With respect to the style of the Essay, it has been 
observed by a most competent judge that it resembles 
that of a well-educated man of the world, rather than 

12 



CRITICAL OPINIONS 13 

of a recluse student, who had made an object of the 
art of composition. It everywhere abounds with col- 
loquial expressions, which he had probably caught by 
the ear from those whom he considered as models of 
good conversation; and hence, though it now seems 
somewhat antiquated and not altogether suited to the 
I dignity of the subject, it may be presumed to have con- 
tributed its share towards the great object of turning 
the thoughts of his contemporaries to logical and meta- 
physical inquiries. 

Lord King 

Although John Locke is so very imposing a figure in 
the history of intelligence, he holds but little place 
in that of pure literature. He has been called "per- 
haps the greatest, but certainly the most characteristic 
of English philosophers " ; it might be added, the most 
innocent of style. . . His style is prolix, dull, and 
without elevation; he expresses himself with perfect 
clearness indeed, but without variety or charm of any 
kind. He seems to have a contempt for all the arts 
of literature, and passes on from sentence to sentence, 
like a man talking aloud in his study, and intent only 
on making the matter in hand perfectly clear to him- 
self. It is only proper to say that this is not the uni- 
versal view, and that it is usual to speak of the home- 
spun style of Locke as " forcible," " incisive," and even 



" ingenious.' 1 



Henry Morley 



BIBLIOGKAPHY 

" John Locke." By Thomas Fowler, D. D. In English 

Men of Letters series; edited by John Morley. 

Harper, 1879. 
"Life of John Locke, The." By. II. B. Fox Bourne. 

2 vols. Harper, 1876. 
" Life of John Locke ; with Extracts from his Cor- 
respondence, Journals and Commonplace Books." 

By Lord King. 2 vols. Bohn, 1858. 
" John Locke." By Leslie Stephen. In Dictionary of 

National Biography. Vol. XXXIV. Macmillan, 

1885. 
" John Locke." By A. Campbell Fraser. In Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica. Vol. XIV. 9th edition. 
" John Locke." In A Library of the World's Best 

Literature. Vol. XVI. Peale & Hill, 1897. 
"First Sketch of English Literature." By Henry 

Morley. Cassell, 1873. 
" Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain." 

By Edmund Lodge. Vol. VI. Bohn, 1850. 
"Biographical History of Philosophy." By George 

Henry Lewes. Vol. II. Parker & Son, 1857. 
" History of Philosophy." By F. Ueberweg. Trans, by 

G. S. Morris. Vol. II. Scribner, 1876. 
"English Thought in the Eighteenth Century." By 

Leslie Stephen. 2 vols. Smith & Elder, 1876. 

In Vol. L, John Locke and Toland. 

In Vol. II., The Principles of 1688. 

14 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 15 

"History of English Literature in the Eighteenth 

Century." By Edmund Gosse. Macmillan, 1888. 

Locke as a prose writer. 
"History of England." By Lord Macaulay. Chaps. 

v., vi., xv., xxi. 

Locke's connection with public affairs. 
"British Thought and Thinkers." By G. S. Morris. 

Griggs, 1880. 

Contains objections to Locke's philosophy. 
"Essays on Educational Reformers." By Bobert H. 

Quick. Appleton, 1890. 
" Literature of Europe." By Henry Hallam. Murray, 

1854. 
" John Locke and Sydenham." By John Brown, M. D. 

In Spare Hours, III. Tichnor & Fields, 1866. 

Locke as a physician. 
" History of Civilization." By Amos Dean. Vol. VI. 

Munsell, 1868. 

The philosophy of Locke. 
"Philosophical Genius of John Locke and Francis 

Bacon." By Sir James Mackintosh. In Miscellane- 
ous Works, 17. Longmans, 1854. 
"John Locke and his Critics." By R. Vaughan. In 

Essays, Vol. II. Jackson & Walford, 1849. 
|" System of Logic, A." By John Stuart Mill. Book I. 

chap. vi. Parker & Son, 1862. 
i" Critical Dictionary of English Literature." By S. A. 

Allibone. Vol. II. Lippincott, 1870. 

Critical estimates and bibliography, 
f " Intellectualism of Locke, The." By Thomas E. 

Webb. Longmans, 1857. 
'Locke's Theory of Knowledge." By James McCosh, 

D. D. In Philosophic Series, No. 5. Scribner, 1884. 



16 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Contains a brief biographical sketch and a clear out- 
line of Locke's philosophy. 

" Philosophy of Locke, The." Introductory notes and 
biographical sketch by John E. Russell, A. M. Holt, 
1900. 

His philosophy as shown in the Essay concerning 
the ILuman Understanding. 

" Works of Dugald Stewart." Edited by Sir William 
Hamilton. Vol. I. Part I. Hamilton, 1858. 
Essay I. Locke's account of the sources of Human 
Knowledge and its influence on the Doctrines of 
some of his successors. 

Essay III. On the Influence of Locke's Authority 
upon the Philosphical systems which prevailed in 
France during the latter part of the Eighteenth 
Century. 

" Physical Realism." By Thomas Case. Chap. vi. 
Longmans, 1888. 

An analysis of Locke's theory of ideas, with observa- 
tions as to its limitations and inconsistencies. 

" Religious Thought in England." By John Hunt. 
Vol. II. Strahan, 1873. 

Locke's religious beliefs and his principles of tolera-' 
tion. 



fee 
acee 

I 

line, 

h 



OF THE CONDUCT OF THE 
UNDEESTANDING 

" Quid tarn 1 temerarium tamque indignum sapientis gravitate at- 
qne constantia, quani aut f alsum sentire, aut quod non satis explo- 
rate perceptum sit, et cognitum, sine ulla dubitatione defendere ? " 

Cic. de Natura Deorum, lib. i. 

1. Introduction. — The last resort a man has recourse 
to, in the conduct of himself, is his understanding; 
for though we distinguish the faculties of the mind, 
and give the supreme command to the will, as to an 
agent, yet the truth is, the man, who is the agent, de- 
termines himself to this or that voluntary action, upon 
some precedent knowledge, or appearance of knowl- 
edge, in the understanding. No man ever sets himself 
about anything but upon some view or other, which 
serves him for a reason for what he does : and whatso- 
ever faculties he employs, the understanding, with such 
light as it has, well or ill informed, constantly leads; 
and by that light, true or false, all his operative powers 
are directed. The will itself, 2 how absolute and uncon- 
trollable soever it may be thought, never fails in its 

1. Quid tam, etc. "What so rash and so unworthy of the dig- 
nity and consistency of a wise man as to hold a false opinion, or to 
defend without any hesitation that which has been perceived and 
accepted as true without sufficient examination." 

2. The will itself, etc The theory of volition here briefly out- 
lined is fully considered in the "Essay concerning the Human 
Understanding," Bk. II. ch. xxi. § 29. 



18 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

obedience to the dictates of the understanding. Tem- 
ples have their sacred images, and we see what influ- 
ence they have always had over a great part of man- 
kind. But in truth, the ideas and images in men's 
minds are the invisible powers that constantly govern 
them, and to these they all universally pay a ready sub- 
mission. It is therefore of the highest concernment 
that great care should be taken of the understanding, 
to conduct it right in the search of knowledge, and in 
the judgments it makes. 

The logic now in use 1 has so long possessed the 
chair, as the only art taught in the schools, for the 
direction of the mind in the study of the arts and sci- 
ences, that it would perhaps be thought an affectation 
of novelty to suspect that rules that have served the 
learned world these two or three thousand years, and 
which, without any complaint of defects, the learned 
have rested in, are not sufficient to guide the under- 
standing. And I should not doubt but this at- 
tempt would be censured as vanity or presump- 
tion, did not the great Lord Verulam's 2 au- 

1. The logic now in use. The logic of Locke's time was based 
upon the principles of Aristotle, who lived about 392 b. c. 

2. Lord Verulam. Francis Bacon (1560-1626), the greatest states- 
man, philosopher, and scientific writer of the Elizabethan Age. His 
chief fame rests upon the " Novum Organum," which was, according 
to the author, "True Directions concerning the Interpretation of 
Nature." By this work, he became the founder of the inductive 
method in scientific research. His biographer, James Spedding, 
says of him : " If he did not succeed in making any scientific dis- 
coveries himself, or even in pointing out the particular steps by 
which others were to make them, he delivered a set of cautions as 
to the use of the human understanding applicable to the pursuit of 
truth in all departments, which have scarcely been added to or im- 
proved upon since his time." 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 19 

thority justify it; who, not servilely thinking 
learning could not be advanced beyond what it was, 
because for many ages it had not been, did not 
rest in the lazy approbation and applause of what was, 
because it was, but enlarged his mind to what it might 
be. In his preface to his Novum Organum, concern- 
ing logic, he pronounces thus : " Qui summas 1 dia- 
lectics partes tribuerunt, atque inde fidissima scientiis 
prsesidia comparari putarunt, verissime et optime 
viderunt intellectum humanum, sibi permissum, merito 
suspectum esse debere. Verum infirmior omnino est 
malo medicina; nee ipsa mali expers. Siquidem dia- 
lectica, quae recepta est, licet ad civilia et artes, quse 
in sermone et opinione positae sunt, rectissime adhibe- 
atur; naturae tamen subtilitatem longo intervallo non 
attingit, et prensando quod non capit, ad errores potius 
stabiliendos et quasi figendos, quam ad viam veritati 
aperiendam valuit." 

" They," says he, " who attribute so much to logic, 
perceived very well and truly that it was not safe to 
trust the understanding to itself without the guard of 
any rules. But the remedy reached not the evil, but 
became a part of it, for the logic which took place, 
though it might do well enough in civil affairs and the 
arts, which consisted in talk and opinion, yet comes 
very far short of subtlety in the real performances of 
nature; and, catching at what it cannot reach, has 
served to confirm and establish errors, rather than to 
open a way to truth." And therefore a little after he 

1. Qui summas, etc. This quotation is not, as stated, from the 
preface to the "Novum Organum," but from that to the "Instau- 
ratio Magna," of which the "Novum Organum" was intended to 
be a part. 



20 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

says, " That it is absolutely necessary that a better and 
perfecter use and employment of the mind and under- 
standing should be introduced." " Necessario requiri- 
tur ut melior et perfectior mentis et intelleetus humani 
usus et adoperatio introducatur." 

2, Parts. — There is, it is visible, great variety in 
men's understandings, and their natural constitutions 
put so wide a difference between some men in this re- 
spect, that art and industry would never be able to 
master, and their very natures seem to want a founda- 
tion to raise on it that which other men easily attain 
unto. Amongst men of equal education there is great 
inequality of parts. And the woods of America, 1 as 
well as the schools of Athens, produce men of several 
abilities in the same kind. Though this be so, yet I 
imagine most men come very short of what they might 
attain unto, in their several degrees, by a neglect of 
their understandings. A few rules of logic are thought 
sufficient in this case for those who pretend to the 
highest improvement, whereas I think there are a great 
many natural defects in the understanding capable of 
amendment, which are overlooked and wholly neg- 
lected. And it is easy to perceive that men are guilty 
of a great many faults in the exercise and improve- 
ment of this faculty of the mind, 2 which hinder them 

1. The woods of America. A suggestive expression when it is 
remembered that this Essay was written in 1697. 

2. Faculty of the mind. In the " Essay concerning the Human 
Understanding," Bk. II. ch. xxi. § 5, Locke says: "The power 
of perception is that which we call the understanding," and in § 6. 
"the ordinary way of speaking is that the understanding and will 
are two faculties of the mind ; a word proper enough, if it be used, 
as all words should be, so as not to breed confusion in men's 
thoughts, by being supposed (as I suspect it has been) to stand for 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 21 

in their progress, and keep them in ignorance and error 
all their lives. Some of them I shall take notice of, 
and endeavor to point out proper remedies for, in the 
following discourse. 

3. Reasoning. — Besides the want of determined 
ideas, 1 and of sagacity and exercise in finding out and 
laying in order intermediate ideas, there are three mis- 
carriages that men are guilty of, in reference to their 
reason, whereby this faculty is hindered in them from 
that service it might do and was designed for. And he 
that reflects upon the actions and discourses of man- 
kind will find their defects in this kind very frequent 
and very observable. 

1. The first is of those who seldom reason at all, but 
do and think according to the example of others, 
whether parents, neighbors, ministers, or who 2 else 
they are pleased to make choice of to have an implicit 
faith in, for the saving of themselves the pains and 
trouble of thinking and examining for themselves. 

2. The second is of those who put passion in the 
place of reason, and being resolved that shall govern 
their actions and arguments, neither use their own, nor 

some real beings in the soul that performed those actions of under- 
standing and volition." 

1. Determined ideas. Locke states elsewhere that he uses deter- 
mined or determinate in the sense of clear and distinct. Read the 
latter part of the " Epistle to the Eeader " preceding the "Essay on 
the Human Understanding." Cf. also the " Essay" itself, Bk. II. 
ch. xxix. § 4. 

2. Who. What is the syntax of this word ? Just here it may be 
noted that there will be found in this Essay many expressions that 
cannot be analyzed or parsed according to the rules of grammar, 
but, as G. H. Lewes has said, " There is no excuse for not under- 
standing Locke. If his language be occasionally loose and waver- 
ing, his meaning is always to be gathered from the context." 



22 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

hearken to other people's reason, any further than it 
suits their humor, interest, or party; and these one 
may observe commonly content themselves with words 
which have no distinct ideas to them, though in other 
matters, that they come with an unbiased indifferency 
to, they want not abilities to talk and hear reason, 
where they have no secret inclination that hinders 
them from being tractable to it. 

3. The third sort is of those who readily and sin- 
cerely follow reason, but for want of having that which 
one may call large, sound, roundabout sense, have not 
a full view of all that relates to the question, and may 
be of moment to decide it. We are all shortsighted, 
and very often see but one side of a matter; our views 
are not extended to all that has a connection with it. 
From this defect I think no man is free. We see but in 
part, 1 and we know but in part, and therefore it is 
no wonder we conclude not right from our partial 
views. This might instruct the proudest esteemer of 
his own parts, how useful it is to talk and consult with 
others, even such as come short of him in capacity, 
quickness, and penetration; for since no one sees all, 
and we generally have different prospects of the same 
thing according to our different, as I may say, posi- 
tions to it, it is not incongruous to think, nor beneath 
any man to try, whether another may not have notions 
of things which have escaped him, and which his reason 
would make use of if they came into his mind. The 
faculty of reasoning seldom or never deceives those 
who trust to it; its consequences, from what it builds 
on, are evident and certain; but that which it often- 

1. We see but in part, etc. Cf. 1 Cor. xiii. 12. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDEBSTANDING 23 

est, if not only, misleads us in is, that the principles 
from which we conclude the grounds upon which we 
bottom our reasoning", are but a part; something is left 
out, which should go into the reckoning, to make it 
just and exact. Here we may imagine a vast and al- 
most infinite advantage that angels and separate 
spirits x may have over us, who in their several degrees 
of elevation above us may be endowed with more com- 
prehensive faculties; and some of them perhaps, hav- 
ing perfect and exact views of all finite beings that 
come under their consideration, can, as it were, in the 
twinkling of an eye, collect together all their scattered 
and almost boundless relations. A mind so furnished, 
what reason has it to acquiesce in the certainty of its 
conclusions ! 

In this we may see the reason why some men of study 
and thought, that reason right and are lovers of truth, 
do make no great advances in their discoveries of it. 
Error and truth are uncertainly blended in their 
minds; their decisions are lame and defective, and 
they are very often mistaken in their judgments : the 
reason whereof is, they converse but with one sort of 
men, they read but one sort of books, they will not 
come in the hearing but of one sort of notions; the 
truth is, they canton out to themselves a little 
Goshen 2 in the intellectual world, where light shines, 

1. Angels and separate spirits. The scholastics of the Middle 
Ages were much engaged in discussing the form and attributes of 
angels. The ideas evolved became a part of the theology of the 
time, which was finally embodied in Milton's magnificent epic, 
11 Paradise Lost." As this was published in 1667, Locke was un- 
doubtedly familiar with the poet's noble treatment of the subject. 

2. Canton out to themselves a little Goshen. Canton, literally, 
to divide a territory into small districts. Here used in the sense 



24 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

and as they conclude, day blesses them; but the rest 
of that vast expansum they give up to night and dark- 
ness, and so avoid coming near it. They have a pretty 
traffic with known correspondents, in some little creek; 
within that they confine themselves, and are dexterous 
managers enough of the wares and products of that 
corner with which they content themselves, but will 
not venture out into the great ocean of knowledge, to 
survey the riches that nature hath stored other parts 
with, no less genuine, no less solid, no less useful than 
what has fallen to their lot, in the admired plenty and 
sufficiency of their own little spot, which to them con- 
tains whatsoever is good in the universe. Those who 
live thus mewed up within their own contracted terri- 
tories, and will not look abroad beyond the boundaries 
that chance, conceit, or laziness has set to their in- 
quiries, but live separate from the notions, discourses, 
and attainments of the rest of mankind, may not amiss 
be represented by the inhabitants of the Marian. 
islands, 1 who, being separated by a large tract of sea 
from all communion with the habitable parts of the 
earth, thought themselves the only people of the world. 
And though the straitness of the conveniences of life 

of portion. The reference is to the land of plenty in which Joseph 
settled his father and brethren when the famine reigned over 
Egypt. Cf. Gen. xlv. 9-11. The figure here elaborated is a fine 
characterization of the spirit of sectarianism that in Locke's time 
was rife in all departments of thought. 

1. Marian Islands. Now called the Marianne or Ladrone Isl- 
ands. They are located in the North Pacific Ocean and were dis- 
covered by Magellan in 1521. They were owned by Spain until 
1899, when Guahan, or Guam, was ceded to the United States and 
the other islands were purchased by Germany. The facts here 
reported about the islanders may be found in Martiniere's Diction- 
naire G^ographique et Critique. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 25 

amongst them had never reached so far as to the use of 
fire, till the Spaniards, not many years since, 1 in their 
voyages from Acapulco, 2 to Manila, brought it 
amongst them; yet, in the want and ignorance of al- 
most all things, they looked upon themselves, even 
after that the Spaniards had brought amongst them the 
notice of variety of nations, abounding in science, arts, 
and conveniences of life, of which they knew nothing; 
they looked upon themselves, I say, as the happiest and 
wisest people of the universe. But for all that, no- 
body, I think, will imagine them deep naturalists or 
solid metaphysicians; nobody will deem the quickest- 
sighted amongst them to have very enlarged views in 
ethics or politics ; nor can anyone allow the most capa- 
ble amongst them to be advanced so far in his under- 
standing as to have any other knowledge but of the 
few little things of his and the neighboring islands 
within his commerce; but far enough from that com- 
prehensive enlargement of mind which adorns a soul 
devoted to truth, assisted with letters, and a free gen- 
eration of the several views and sentiments of thinking 
men of all sides. Let not men, therefore, that would 
have a sight of what everyone pretends to be desirous 
to have a sight of, truth in its full extent, narrow and 
blind their own prospect. Let not men think there is 
no truth but in the sciences that they study, or books 
that they read. To prejudge other men's notions, be- 
fore we have looked into them, is not to show their 
darkness, but to put out our own eyes. " Try all 

1. Not many years since. About one hundred and seventy-five 
years before this Essay was written. 

2. Acapulco, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, had an extensive 
commerce during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 



26 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

things, 1 hold fast that which is good," is a divine rule, 
coming from the Father of light and truth, and it is 
hard to know what other way men can come at truth, 
to lay hold of it, if they do not dig and search for it 
as for gold and hid treasure ; 2 but he that does so 
must have much earth and rubbish before he gets the 
pure metal; sand and pebbles and dross usually lie 
blended with it, but the gold is nevertheless gold, and 
will enrich the man that employs his pains to seek and 
separate it. Neither is there any danger he should be 
deceived by the mixture. Every man carries about him 
a touchstone, 3 if he will make use of it, to distinguish 
substantial gold from superficial glitterings, truth 
from appearances. And, indeed, the use and benefit of 
this touchstone, which is natural reason, is spoiled and 
lost only by assuming prejudices, overweening pre- 
sumption, and narrowing our minds. The want of ex- 
ercising it in the full extent of things intelligible, is 
that which weakens and extinguishes this noble faculty 
in us. Trace it and see whether it be not so. The day- 
laborer in a country village has commonly but a small 
pittance of knowledge, because his ideas and notions 
have been confined to the narrow bounds of a poor 
conversation and employment: the low mechanic of a 
country town does somewhat outdo him: porters and 
cobblers of great cities surpass them. A country gen- 



1. Try all things, etc. 1 Thess. v. 21. Give the exact wording of 
the authorized English Version. 

2. Hid treasure. Cf. Prov. ii. 4. 

3. Touchstone. Literally, a hard, black stone used in testing 
metals, not so much in use now as formerly. The test is made by 
comparing the streak made on the stone by the metal to be tested 
with the streaks of known alloys. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 27 

tleman * who, leaving Latin and learning in the uni- 
versity, removes thence to his mansion house, and as- 
sociates with neighbors of the same strain, who relish 
nothing but hunting and a bottle: with those alone he 
spends his time, with those alone he converses, and can 
away with no company whose discourse goes beyond 
what claret and dissoluteness inspire. Such a patriot, 
formed in this happy way of improvement, cannot fail, 
as we see, to give notable decisions upon the bench 
at quarter-sessions, 2 and eminent proofs of his skill in 
politics, when the strength of his purse and party have 
advanced him to a more conspicuous station. To such 
a one, truly, an ordinary cofTee-house gleaner 3 of the 
city is an arrant 4 statesman, and as much superior to 
as a man conversant about Whitehall 5 and the court 
is to an ordinary shopkeeper. To carry this a little 
further: here is one muffled up in the zeal and infalli- 
bility of his own sect, and will not touch a book or 
enter into debate with a person that will question any 
of those things which to him are sacred. Another sur- 

1. A country gentleman. What is the syntax of this expression ? 

2. Quarter-sessions. A criminal court in England, held quar- 
terly, justices of the peace presiding in counties, and the recorders 
in boroughs. The court has jurisdiction of highway laws, poor- 
laws, etc. 

3. CofTee-house gleaner. A politician who accomplished his end 
by frequenting the coffee-houses of the day. This expression sug- 
gests the influence of those places of resort on the literary and 
political interests of Locke's time. For reference, consult Macau- 
lay's "History of England," ch. iii. 

4. Arrant. The word is here used in the sense of thorough. 

5. Whitehall. This royal palace was built in the reign of Henry 
III. For three centuries it was the residence of the Archbishop 
of York. During the reign of Henry VIII. it became the property 
of the crown. From a window of the palace Charles I. walked to 
the scaffold. 



28 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

veys our differences in religion with an equitable and 
fair indifference, and so finds, probably, that none of 
them are in everything unexceptionable. These di- 
visions and systems were made by men, and carry the 
mark of fallible on them; and in those whom he differs 
from, and till he opened his eyes had a general preju- 
dice against, he meets with more to be said for a great 
many things than before he was aware of, or could 
have imagined. Which of these two now is most likely 
to judge right in our religious controversies, and to 
be most stored with truth, the mark all pretend to aim 
at? All these men that I have instanced in, 1 thus 
unequally furnished with truth and advanced in 
knowledge, I suppose of equal natural parts; all the 
odds between them has been the different scope that 
has been given to their understandings to range in, 
for the gathering up of information and furnishing 
their heads with ideas and notions and observations, 
whereon to employ their mind and form their under- 
standings. 

It will possibly be objected, "who is sufficient for 
all this ? " I answer, more than can be imagined. 
Everyone knows what his proper business is, and 
what, according to the character he makes of himself, 
the world may justly expect of him; and to answer 
that, he will find he will have time and opportunity 
enough to furnish himself, if he will not deprive him- 
self by a narrowness of spirit of those helps that are 
at hand. I do not say, to be a good geographer, that 
a man should visit every mountain, river, promontory, 
and creek upon the face of the earth, view the build- 

1. Instanced in. Given in illustration. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 29 

ings and survey the land everywhere, as if he were go- 
ing to make a purchase ; but yet everyone must allow 
that he shall know a country better that makes often 
sallies into it and traverses up and down, than he that 
like a mill-horse goes still round in the same track, 
or keeps within the narrow bounds of a field or two 
that delight him. He that will inquire out the best *' 
books in every science, and inform himself of the most 
material x authors of the several sects of philosophy 
and religion, will not find it an infinite work to ac- 
quaint himself with the sentiments of mankind con- 
cerning the most weighty and comprehensive subjects. 
Let him exercise the freedom of his reason and under- 
standing in such a latitude as this, and his mind will 
be strengthened, his capacity enlarged, his faculties 
improved; and the light which the remote and scat- 
tered parts of truth will give to one another will so 
assist his judgment, that he will seldom be widely out, 
or miss giving proof of a clear head and a compre- 
hensive knowledge. At least, this is the only way I 
know to give the understanding its due improvement 
! to the full extent of its capacity, and to distinguish the 
| two most different things I know in the world, a logical 
chicaner 2 from a man of reason. Only, he that would 
thus give the mind its flight, and send abroad his in- 
quiries into all parts after truth, must be sure to settle 
in his head determined ideas of all that he employs 
his thoughts about, and never fail to judge himself, 
and judge unbiasedly, of all that he receives from 

1. Material. How is the word here used ? Consult the dic- 
tionary. 

2. Chicaner. Consult the dictionary for the origin of the word 
chicane. 



30 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

others, either in their writings or discourses. Rever- 
ence or prejudice must not be suffered to give beauty 
or deformity to any of their opinions. 

4. Of Practice and Habits. — We are born with facul- 
ties and powers capable almost of anything, such at 
least as would carry us further than can easily be im- 
agined: but it is only the exercise of those powers : 
which gives us ability and skill in anything, and leads 
us towards perfection. 

A middle-aged plowman will scarce ever be 
brought to the carriage and language of a gentleman, 
though his body be as well-proportioned, and his joints 
as supple, and his natural parts not any way inferior. 
The legs of a dancing-master and the fingers of a 
musician fall as it were naturally, without thought or 
pains, into regular and admirable motions. Bid them 
change their parts, and they will in vain endeavor 
to produce like motions in the members not used to 
them, and it will require length of time and long prac- 
tice to attain but some degrees of a like ability. What 
incredible and astonishing actions do we find rope- 
dancers and tumblers bring their bodies to! Wot but 
that sundry in almost all manual arts are as wonder- 
ful; but I name those which the world takes notice of 
for such, because on that very account they give money 
to see them. All these admired motions, beyond the 
reach and almost conception of unpracticed spectators, 
are nothing but the mere effects of use and industry 
in men whose bodies have nothing peculiar in them 
from those of the amazed lookers-on. 

As it is in the body, so it is in the mind: practice 
makes it what it is; and most even of those excel- 
lencies which are looked on as natural endowments, 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 31 

will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to 
be the product of exercise, and to be raised to that 
pitch only by repeated actions. Some men are re- 
marked for pleasantness in raillery; others for apo- 
logues and apposite diverting stories. This is apt to 
be taken for the effect of pure nature, and that the 
rather because it is not got by rules, and those who 
excel in either of them never purposely set themselves 
to the study of it as an art to be learnt. But yet it is 
true, that at first some lucky hit, which took with some- 
body and gained him commendation, encouraged him 
to try again, inclined his thoughts and endeavors that 
way, till at last he insensibly got a facility in it, with- 
out perceiving how; and that is attributed wholly to 
nature which was much more the effect of use and 
practice. I do not deny that natural disposition may 
often give the first rise to it, but that never carries a 
man far without use and exercise, and it is practice 
alone that brings the powers of the mind, as well as 
those of the body, to their perfection. Many a good 
poetic vein is buried under a trade, and never produces 
anything for want of improvement. We see the ways 
of discourse and reasoning are very different, even 
concerning the same matter, at court and in the uni- 
versity. And he that will go but from Westminster- 
hall to the Exchange 1 will find a different genius and 

1. Westminster-hall to the Exchange. The first building now 
serves as the vestibule to the Houses of Parliament. In Locke's 
time it was itself the legislative hall. Here Charles I. was con- 
demned and Cromwell hailed as Lord Protector. Coronations took 
place here until the time of George IV. The Exchange is a meeting- 
place for merchants located near St. Paul's. The first Royal Ex- 
change in London was opened in the sixteenth century, the idea 
being introduced from Antwerp by Sir Thomas Gresham. 



32 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

turn in their ways of talking; and yet one cannot 
think that all whose lot fell in the city were born with 
different parts from those who were bred at the uni- 
versity or inns of court. 1 

To what purpose all this but to show that the dif- 
ference so observable in men's understandings and 
parts does not arise so much from their natural facul- 
ties as acquired habits. He would be laughed at that 
should go about to make a fine dancer out of a country 
hedger 2 at past fifty. And he will not have much 
better success who shall endeavor at that age to make 
a man reason well, or speak handsomely, who has never 
been used to it, though you should lay before him a 
collection of all the best precepts of logic or oratory. 
Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules or laying 
them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit 
of doing without reflecting on the rule; and you may 
as well hope to make a good painter or musician ex- 
tempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of 
music and painting, as a coherent thinker or a strict 
reasoner by a set of rules 3 showing him wherein right 
reasoning consists. 

1. Inns of court. Legal societies in London which have the ex- 
clusive privilege of calling candidates to the bar. The name is also 
applied to the buildings occupied by these societies. They are the 
Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn, and Gray's 
Inn. 

2. Hedger. One who makes or mends hedges. Used here, in 
general, for any countryman. 

3. A set of rules. Locke here emphasizes the thought that he so 
often expressed, that no artificial method of reasoning will ever 
lead to a knowledge of the truth. In the "Essay on the Human 
Understanding," Bk. IV. ch. xvii. § 4-6, is to be found Locke's 
celebrated attack on the syllogism. It is here that we read, " God 
has not been so sparing to men, to make them barely two-legged 



CONDUCT OF TEE UNDERSTANDING 33 

This being so that defects and weakness in men's 
understanding, as well as other faculties, come from 
want of a right use of their own minds, I am apt to 
think the fault is generally mislaid upon nature, and 
there is often a complaint of want of parts when the 
fault lies in want of a due improvement of them. We 
see men frequently dexterous and sharp enough in 
making a bargain who, if you reason with them about 
matters of religion, appear perfectly stupid. 

5. Ideas. — I will not here, in what relates to the right 
conduct and improvement of the understanding, repeat 
again the getting clear and determined ideas, 1 and 
the employing our thoughts rather about them than 
about sounds put for them, nor of settling the signifi- 
cation of words which we use with ourselves in the 
search of truth, or with others in discoursing about it. 
Those hindrances of our understandings in the pursuit 
of knowledge I have sufficiently enlarged upon in an- 



creatures, and left it to Aristotle to make them rational." 
Summing up the discussion in these sections, the philosopher says : 
"Of what use then are syllogisms ? I answer, their chief and main 
use is in the schools, where men are allowed without shame to 
deny the agreement of ideas that do manifestly agree ; or out of 
the schools, to those who from thence have learned without shame 
| to deny the connection of ideas, which even to themselves is visible. 
j But to an ingenuous searcher after truth, who has no other aim 
■ but to find it, there is no need of any such form to force the allow- 
ing of the inference." 

1. Clear and determined ideas . . . signification of words. 
Locke says elsewhere: "The foundation of error and mistake in 
most men lies in having obscure and confused ideas, doubtful and 
obscure words ; our words always in their signification depend- 
ing upon our ideas, being clear or obscure proportionably as our 
notions are so, and sometimes have little more but the sound 
of the word for the notion of the thing." 



34 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

other place, 1 so that nothing more needs here to be 
said of those matters. 

6. Principles. — There is another fault that stops or 
misleads men in their knowledge which I have also 
spoken something of, but yet is necessary to mention 
here again, that we may examine it to the bottom and 
see the root it springs from, and that is, a custom of 
taking up with principles 2 that are not self-evident, 
and very often not so much as true. It is not unusual 
to see men rest their opinions upon foundations that 
have no more certainty and solidity than the proposi- 
tions built on them and embraced for their sake. Such 
foundations are these and the like, viz., the founders 
or leaders of my party are good men, and therefore 
their tenets are true; it is the opinion of a sect that 
is erroneous, therefore it is false; it hath been long 
received in the world, therefore it is true; or, it is 
new, and therefore false. 

These, and many the like, which are by no means the 
measures of truth and falsehood, the generality of men 
make the standards by which they accustom their un- 
derstanding to judge. And thus, they 3 falling into a 
habit of determining of truth and falsehood by such 



1. In another place. See note 1, page 21; also, for a discussion of 
" Words," the " Essay on the Human Understanding," Bk. III. 
chs. ix., x., and xi. Cf. Bacon's " Novum Organum," Bk. I. Aphs., 
43, 59, 60. 

2. Principles. The major premises from which all reasoning 
proceeds. There can be no innate principles, according to Locke, 
since there are no innate ideas. An elaborate discussion of Locke's 
opinion as to innate principles is to be found in Bk. I. of the 
" Essay on the Human Understanding." 

3. And thus they, etc. Keconstruct this sentence bo as to make 
it grammatical. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 35 

wrong measures, it is no wonder they should embrace 
error for certainty, and be very positive in things they 
have no ground for. 

There is not any who pretends to the least reason, 
but when any of these his false maxims are brought 
to the test, must acknowledge them to be fallible, and 
such as he will not allow in those that differ from him; 
and yet after he is convinced 1 of this you shall see 
him go on in the use of them, and the very next oc- 
casion that offers argue again upon the same grounds. 
Would one not be ready to think that men are willing 
to impose upon themselves, and mislead their own un- 
derstandings, who conduct them by such wrong meas- 
ures, even after they see they cannot be relied on ? But 
yet they will not appear so blamable as may be thought 
at first sight; for I think there are a great many that 
argue thus in earnest, and do it not to impose on 
themselves or others. They are persuaded of what they 
say, and think there is weight in it, though in a like 
case they have been convinced there is not; but men 
would be intolerable to themselves and contemptible 
to others if they should embrace opinions without any 
ground, and hold what they could give no manner of 
reason for. True or false, solid or sandy, the mind 
must have some foundation to rest itself upon, and, 
as I have remarked in another place, 2 it no sooner 
entertains any proposition but it presently hastens to 

1. After he is convinced. Cf. "Hudibras" of Samuel Butler 
(1600-1680) Pt. iii. Canto iii. 11. 243, 244. 

4 \ He that complies against his will 
Is of his own opinion still." 

2. In another place. i ' Essay on the Human Understanding," Bk. 
IV. ch. xii. §§ 12, 13. 



i 



36 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

some hypothesis 1 to bottom it on ; till then it is un- 
quiet and unsettled. So much do our own very tem- 
pers dispose us to a right use of our understandings if 
we would follow, as we should, the inclinations of our 
nature. 

In some matters of concernment, especially those of 
religion, men are not permitted to be always wavering 
and uncertain, they must embrace and profess some 
tenets or other; and it would be a shame, nay a con- 
tradiction too heavy for anyone's mind to lie con- 
stantly under, for him to pretend seriously to be per- 
suaded of the truth of any religion, and yet not to be 
able to give any reason of his belief, or to say any- 
thing for his preference of this to any other opinion: 
and therefore they must make use of some principles 
or other, and those can be no other than such as they 
have and can manage; and to say they are not in 
earnest persuaded by them, and do not rest upon those 
they make use of, is contrary to experience, and to 
allege that they are not misled, when we complain 
they are. 

If this be so, it will be urged, why then do they not 
make use of sure and unquestionable principles, rather 
than rest on such grounds as may deceive them, and 
will, as is visible, serve to support error as well as 
truth? 

To this I answer, the reason why they do not make 
use of better and surer principles is because they can- 
not: but this inability proceeds not from want of nat- 
ural parts (for those few whose case that is are to be 
excused) but for want of use and exercise. Few men 

1. Hypothesis. Consult the dictionary for the origin of this 
word, and observe its force in this connection. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 37 

are from their youth accustomed to strict reasoning, 
and to trace the dependence of any truth, in a long 
train of consequences, to its remote principles, and to 
observe its connection; and he that by frequent prac- 
tice 1 has not been used to this employment of his 
understanding, it is no more wonder that he should 
not, when he is grown into years, be able to bring his 
mind to it, than that he should not be on a sudden 
able to grave or design, dance on the ropes, or write 
a good hand, who has never practiced either of them. 

Nay, the most of men are so wholly strangers to this 
that they do not so much as perceive their want of it : 
they dispatch the ordinary business of their callings 
by rote, as we say, as they have learnt it, and if at any 
time they miss success they impute it to anything 
rather than want of thought or skill, that they con- 
clude (because they know no better) they have in per- 
fection : or if there be any subject that interest or 
fancy 2 has recommended to their thoughts, their rea- 
soning about it is still after their own fashion; be it 
better or worse, it serves their turns, and is the best 
they are acquainted with, and therefore, when they are 
led by it into mistakes and their business succeeds 
accordingly, they impute it to any cross accident or 
default of others, rather than to their own want of 
understanding ; that is what nobody discovers 3 or 

1. And he that by frequent practice, etc. Another illustration of 
careless grammatical construction. 

2. Interest or fancy. Cf. "Essay on the Human Understand- 
ing," Bk. IV. ch. xx. § 12. 

3. That is what nobody discovers. Cf. the following from 
Rochefoucault : "Tout le monde se plaint de sa me'moire, et 
personnenese plaint de son jugement." "Everyone finds fault 
with his memory, and no one finds fault with his judgment." 



38 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

complains of in himself. Whatsoever made his business 
to miscarry, it was not want of right thought and 
judgment in himself: he sees no such defect in him- 
self, but is satisfied that he carries on his designs well 
enough by his own reasoning, or at least should have 
done, had it not been for unlucky traverses x not in 
his power. Thus, being content with this short and 
very imperfect use of his understanding, he never trou- 
bles himself to seek out methods of improving his 
mind, and lives all his life without any notion of close 
reasoning in a continued connection of a long train of 
consequences from sure foundations, such as is requi- 
site for the making out and clearing most of the 
speculative truths most men own to believe and are 
most concerned in. Not to mention here what I shall 
have occasion to insist on by and by more fully, 2 viz., 
that in many cases it is not one series of consequences 
will serve the turn, but many different and opposite 
deductions must be examined and laid together before 
a man can come to make a right judgment of the point 
in question. What then can be expected from men that 
neither see the want of any such kind of reasoning as 
this; nor, if they do, know how to set about it, or 
could perform it ? You may as well set a countryman, 
who scarce knows the figures and never cast up a sum 
of three particulars, to state a merchant's long account, 
and find the true balance of it. 

What then should be done in the case? I answer, 
we should always remember what I said above, that the 
faculties of our souls are improved and made useful to 
us just after the same manner as our bodies are. 

1. Traverses. Things that thwart or obstruct. 

2. More fully. See next section. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 39 

Would you have a man write or paint, dance or fence 
well, or perform any other manual 1 operation dex- 
terously and with ease; let him have ever so much 
vigor and activity, suppleness and address naturally, 
yet nobody expects this from him unless he has been 
used to it, and has employed time and pains in fash- 
ioning and forming his hand or outward parts to these 
motions. Just so it is in the mind; would you have 
a man reason well, you must use him to it betimes, 
exercise his mind in observing the connection of ideas 
and following them in train. Nothing does this better 
than mathematics, which therefore I think should be 
taught all those who have the time and opportunity, 
not so much to make them mathematicians as to make 
them reasonable creatures; for though we all call our- 
selves so because we are born to it if we please, yet we 
may truly say, nature gives us but the seeds of it; we 
are born to be, if we please, rational creatures, but it 
is use and exercise only that makes us so, and we are 
indeed so no further than industry and application has 
carried us. And therefore, in ways of reasoning which 
men have not been used to, he that will observe the 
conclusions they take up must be satisfied they are not 
all rational. 2 

This has been the less taken notice of because every 
one in his private affairs uses some sort of reasoning 
or other enough to denominate him reasonable. But 
the mistake is that he that is found reasonable in one 
thing is concluded to be so in all, and to think or to 

1. Manual. What is the inaccuracy in the use of this word ? 

2. Not all rational. This is the reading in the edition of 1781, 
and is probably what Locke wrote, though in the first edition the 
expression is " not at all rational." 



40 CONDUCT OF THE UNDEBSTANDING 

say otherwise is thought so unjust an affront and so 
senseless a censure that nobody ventures to do it. It 
looks like the degradation of a man below the dignity 
of his nature. It is true, that he that reasons well in 
any one thing, has a mind naturally capable of rea- 
soning well in others, and to the same degree of 
strength and clearness, and possibly much greater, had 
his understanding been so employed. But it is as true 
that he who can reason well to-day about one sort of 
matters, cannot at all reason to-day about others, 
though perhaps a year hence he may. But wherever a 
man's rational faculty fails him, and will not serve 
him to reason, there we cannot say he is rational, how 
capable soever he may be by time and exercise to be- 
come so. 

Try in men of low and mean education who have 
never elevated their thoughts above the spade and the 
plow, nor looked beyond the ordinary drudgery of a 
day-laborer. Take the thoughts of such an one used for 
many years to one track, out of that narrow compass 
he has been all his life confined to, you will find him 
no more capable of reasoning than almost 1 a, perfect 
natural. 2 Some one or two rules on which their con- 
clusions immediately depend, you will find in most men 
have governed all their thoughts; these, true or false, 
have been the maxims they have been guided by: take 
these from them and they are perfectly at a loss, their 
compass and pole-star 3 then are gone, and their un- 
derstanding is perfectly at a nonplus; and therefore 

1. Almost. What is the syntax of this word ? 

2. Natural. One born without the usual faculty of reasoning 
or understanding. 

3. Compass and pole-star. Means of guidance. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 41 

they either immediately return to their old maxims 
again, as the foundations to all truth to them, not- 
withstanding all that can be said to show their weak- 
ness, or if they give them up to their reasons, they 
with them give up all truth and further inquiry, and 
think there is no such thing as certainty. For if you 
would enlarge their thoughts and settle them upon 
more remote and surer principles, they either cannot 
easily apprehend them, or, if they can, know not what 
use to make of them, for long deductions from remote 
principles are what they have not been used to and 
cannot manage. 

What, then, can grown men never be improved or 
enlarged in their understandings? I say not so, but 
this I think I may say, that it will not be done without 
industry and application, which will require more time 
and pains than grown men, settled in their course of 
life, will allow to it, and therefore very seldom is done. 
And this very capacity of attaining it by use and ex- 
ercise only, brings us back to that which I laid down 
before, that it is only practice that improves our minds 
as well as bodies, and we must expect nothing from 
our understandings any further than they are per- 
fected by habits. 

The Americans are not 1 all born with worse under- 
standings than the Europeans, though we see none of 
them have such reaches in the arts and sciences. And 
among the children of a poor countryman, the lucky 

1. The Americans are not, etc. A somewhat highly developed 
state of civilization is necessary to produce great "reaches in the 
arts and sciences." The Americans of Locke's time were still living 
in more or less primitive environments and had problems to solve 
that no longer appealed to the people of Europe. 



42 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

chance of education, and getting into the world, gives 
one infinitely the superiority in parts over the rest, who 
continuing at home had continued also just of the 
same size with his brethren. 

He that has to do with young scholars, 1 especially 
in mathematics, may perceive how their minds open by 
degrees, and how it is exercise alone that opens them. 
Sometimes they will stick a long time at a part of a 
demonstration, not for want of will and application, 
but really for want of perceiving the connection of 
two ideas that, to one whose understanding is more 
exercised, is as visible as anything can be. The same 
would be with a grown man beginning to siudy mathe- 
matics, the understanding for want of use often sticks 
in every plain way, and he himself that is so puzzled, 
when he comes to see the connection wonders what it 
was he stuck at in a case so plain. 

7. Mathematics. — I have mentioned mathematics as 
a way to settle in the mind a habit of reasoning closely 
and in train; not that I think it necessary that all 
men should be deep mathematicians, but that, having 
got the way of reasoning, which that study necessarily 
brings the mind to, they might be able to transfer it 
to other parts of knowledge as they shall have occasion. 
For in all sorts 2 of reasoning every single argument 

1. With young scholars. Locke's practical experience in the 
education of the young gives force to what he here states. He was 
for a time tutor at Christ Church, then he instructed the second 
Earl of Shaftesbury, and afterwards supervised the studies of the 
third Earl. He traveled in France with another pupil. 

2. For in all sorts, etc. Locke here brings out the distinction 
between probable and demonstrative reasoning ; in the latter case, 
one line of argument alone being necessary to reach a certain 
conclusion, whereas, in the former case, several lines must be 
pursued to establish in the end only a probability. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 43 

should be managed as a mathematical demonstration, 
the connection and dependence of ideas should be fol- 
lowed, till the mind is brought to the source on which 
it bottoms, and observes the coherence all along, though 
in proofs of probability one such train is not enough 
to settle the judgment, as in demonstrative knowledge. 

Where a truth is made out by one demonstration, 
there needs no further inquiry; but in probabilities, 
where there wants demonstration to establish the truth 
beyond doubt, there it is not enough to trace one argu- 
ment to its source, and observe its strength and weak- 
ness, but all the arguments, after having been so ex- 
amined on both sides, must be laid in balance one 
against another, and upon the whole the understanding 
determine its assent. 

This is a way of reasoning the understanding should 
be accustomed to, which is so different from what the 
illiterate are used to that even learned men sometimes 
seem to have very little or no notion of it. Nor is it 
to be wondered, since the way of disputing in the 
schools 1 leads them quite away from it, by insisting 
on one topical argument, 2 by the success of which the 
truth or falsehood of the question is to be determined, 
and victory adjudged to the opponent or defendant, 
which is all one as if one should balance an account 

1. Disputing in the schools. In section 189, of " Thoughts con- 
cerning Education," Locke states very forcibly his opposition to 
the methods then prevailing in the universities of Europe. He 
shows that "the great aim and glory of disputing," is not that a 
man may " distinguish betwixt truth and falsehood," but that he 
may be "able to maintain whatever he has once affirmed." 

2. Topical argument. A probable argument derived from one 
of the general classes of considerations known in logic as the 
"topics." 



44 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

by one sum, charged and discharged, when there are 
a hundred others to be taken into consideration. 

This, therefore, it would be well if men's minds were 
accustomed to, and that early, that they might not 
erect their opinions upon one single view when so many 
others are requisite to make up the account, and must 
come into the reckoning before a man can form a right 
judgment. This would enlarge their minds and give 
a due freedom to their understandings, that they might 
not be led into error by presumption, laziness, or pre- 
cipitancy, for I think nobody can approve such a con- 
duct of the understanding as should mislead it from 
truth, though it be ever so much in fashion to make 
use of it. 

To this perhaps it will be objected, that to manage 
the understanding as I propose would require every 
man to be a scholar, and to be furnished with all the 
materials of knowledge and exercised in all the ways 
of reasoning. To which I answer, that it is a shame 
for those that have time and the means to attain 
knowledge to want i any helps or assistance for the 
improvement of their understandings that are to be 
got, and to such I would be thought here chiefly to 
speak. Those methinks, who, by the industry and parts 
of their ancestors, have been set free from a constant 
drudgery to their backs and their bellies, should be- 
stow some of their spare time on their heads, and open 
their minds by some trials and essays, in all the sorts 
and matters of reasoning. I have before mentioned 
mathematics, wherein algebra gives new helps and 



1. Want. Notice the almost constant use of this word in its 
original sense of lack. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 45 

views to the understanding. If I propose these, 1 it 
is not, as I said, to make every man a thorough mathe- 
matician or a deep algebraist : but yet I think the study 
of them is of infinite use, even to grown men; first, 
by experimentally convincing them that to make any 
one reason well it is not enough to have parts where- 
with he is satisfied and that serve him well enough in 
his ordinary course. A man in those studies will see, 
that however good he may think his understanding, 
yet in many things, and those very visible, it may fail 
him. This would take off that presumption that most 
men have of themselves in this part, and they would 
not be so apt to think their minds wanted no helps to 
enlarge them, that there could be nothing added to the 
acuteness and penetration of their understandings. 

Secondly, the study of mathematics would show them 
the necessity there is in reasoning, to separate all the 
distinct ideas, and see the habitudes 2 that all those 
concerned in the present inquiry have to one another, 
and to lay by those which relate not to the proposition 
in hand, and wholly to leave them out of the reckon- 
ing. This is that which in other subjects besides quan- 
tity, is what is absolutely requisite to just reasoning, 
though in them it is not so easily observed nor so care- 
fully practiced. In those parts of knowledge where it 
is thought demonstration has nothing to do, men rea- 
son as it were in the lump; and if, upon a summary 
and confused view, or upon a partial consideration, 
they can raise the appearance of a probability, they 



1. These. What is its antecedent ? What would be the proper 
pronoun according to modern usage ? 

2. Habitudes. Relations. At present a rare use of the word. 



V 



46 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

usually rest content, especially if it be in a dispute 
where every little straw is laid hold on, and everything 
that can but be drawn in any way to give color to the 
argument is advanced with ostentation. But that mind 
is not in a posture to< find the truth that does not dis- 
tinctly take all the parts asunder, and omitting what is 
not at all to the point, draw a conclusion from the 
result of all the particulars which any way influence it. 
There is another no less useful habit to be got by an 
application to mathematical demonstrations, and that 
is, of using the mind to a long train of consequences: 
but having mentioned that already, I shall not again 
here repeat it. 

As to men whose fortunes and time are narrower, 
what may suffice them is not of that vast extent as may 
be imagined, and so comes not within the objection. 

Nobody is under an obligation to know everything. 
Knowledge and science in general is the business only 
of those who are at ease and leisure. Those who have 
particular callings ought to understand them, and it is 
no unreasonable proposal, nor impossible to be com- 
passed, that they should think and reason right about 
what is their daily employment. This one cannot 
think them incapable of without leveling them with 
the brutes, and charging them with a stupidity below 
the rank of rational creatures. 

8. Religion.— Besides his particular calling for the 
support of this life, everyone has a concern in a future 
life, which he is bound to look after. This engages his 
thoughts in religion, and here it mightily lies upon him 
to understand and reason right. Men, therefore, can- 
not be excused from understanding the words and 
framing the general notions relating to religion right. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING ±1 

The one day of seven, 1 besides other days of rest, al- 
lows in the Christian world time enough for this, (had 
they had no other idle hours,) if they would but make 
use of these vacancies from their daily labor, and apply 
themselves to an improvement of knowledge with as 
much diligence as they often do to a great many other 
things that are useless, and had but those that would 
enter them, according to their several capacities, in a 
right way to this knowledge. The original make of 
their minds is like that of other men, and they would 
be found not to want understanding fit to receive the 
knowledge of religion if they were a little encouraged 
and helped in it as they should be. For there are in- 
stances of very mean people who have raised their 
minds t© a great sense and understanding of religion; 
and though these have not been so frequent as could 
be wished, yet they are enough to clear that condition 
of life from a necessity of gross ignorance, and to show 
that more might be brought to be rational creatures 
and Christians, (for they can hardly be thought really 
to be so who, wearing the name, know not so much as 
the very principles of that religion,) if due care were 
taken of them. For, if I mistake not, the peasantry 
lately in France 2 (a rank of people under a much 



1. The one day of seven, etc. The difficulty in this awkward 
sentence lies in the wording of the final conditional clanse. If read 
as follows, the meaning becomes clear: "and [if they] had but 
those [persons] that would enter \i. e., lead] them, according to 
their several capacities, in[to] a right way to this knowledge." 

2. The peasantry lately in France. The reference here is to the 
condition of the French Huguenots previous to the Revocation of 
the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Locke's travels in France gave him 
opportunity to observe the " want and poverty " as well as to study 
the religion of these peasants. 



48 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

heavier pressure of want and poverty than the day- 
laborers in England) of the reformed religion under- 
stood it much better and could say more for it than 
those of a higher condition among us. 

But if it shall be concluded that the meaner sort of 
people must give themselves up to brutish stupidity in 
the things of their nearest concernment, which I see 
no reason for, this excuses not those of a freer fortune 
and education, if they neglect their understandings, 
and take no care to employ them as they ought and set 
them right in the knowledge of those things for which 
principally they were given them. At least those whose 
plentiful fortunes allow them the opportunities and 
helps of improvement are not so few but that it might 
be hoped great advancements might be made in knowl- 
edge of all kinds, especially in that of the greatest con- 
cern and largest views, if men would make a right use 
of their faculties and study their own understandings. 

9. Ideas. 1 — Outward corporeal objects that constantly 
importune our senses and captivate our appetites, fail 
not to fill our heads with lively and lasting ideas of 
that kind. Here the mind needs not to be set upon get- 
ting greater store; they offer themselves fast enough, 
and are usually entertained in such plenty and lodged 
so carefully, that the mind wants room or attention for 
others that it has more use and need of. To fit the 
understanding, therefore, for such reasoning as I have 
been above speaking of, care should be taken to fill it 

1. Ideas. Locke says in the Introduction to the " Essay" that he 
uses the term idea " to express whatever is meant by phantasm, 
notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed 
about in thinking"; also in Bk. II. ch. viii. § 8, "Whatever 
the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of percep- 
tion, thought or understanding, that I call an idea." 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 49 

with moral and more abstract ideas, for these not of- 
fering themselves to the senses, but being to be framed 
to the understanding, people are generally so neglectful 
of a faculty they are apt to think wants nothing, that 
I fear most men's minds are more unfurnished with 
such ideas than is imagined. They often use the 
words, and how can they be suspected to want the 
ideas? What I have said in the third book of my 
essay 1 will excuse me from any other answer to this 
question. But to convince people of what moment it 
is to their understandings to be furnished with such 
abstract ideas, steady and settled in them, give me 
leave to ask how anyone shall be able to know whether 
he be obliged to be just, if he has not established ideas 
in his mind of obligation and of justice, since knowl- 
edge consists in nothing but the perceived agreement 
or disagreement of those ideas ; 2 and so of all others 
the like which concern our lives and manners. And if 
men do find a difficulty to see the agreement or dis- 
agreement of two angles which lie before their eyes 
unalterable in a diagram, how utterly impossible will 
it be to perceive it in ideas that have no other sensible 
objects to represent them to the mind but sounds, with 
which they have no manner of conformity, and there- 
fore had need to be clearly settled in the mind them- 
selves, if we would make any clear judgment about 

1. Third book of my essay. See note 1, page 34. 

2. Agreement or disagreement of those ideas. In the "Essay," 
Bk. IV. ch. i. § 2, Locke says : "Knowledge then seems to me to 
be nothing but the perception of the connection and agreement, or 
disagreement and repugnancy, of any of our ideas." It was this 
placing of certainty in the perception of the agreement or dis- 
agreement of our ideas that led the Bishop of Worcester to suspect 
the dangerous consequence to the doctrine of the Trinity. 



50 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

them! This, therefore, is one of the first things the 
mind should be employed about in the right conduct of 
the understanding, without which it is impossible it 
should be capable of reasoning right about those mat- 
ters. But in these, and all other ideas, care must be 
taken that they harbor no inconsistencies, and that 
they have a real existence where real existence is sup- 
posed, and are not mere chimeras * with a supposed 
existence. 

10. Prejudice. — Everyone is forward to complain of 
the prejudices that mislead other men or parties, as if 
he were free and had none of his own. This being 
objected on all sides, it is agreed that it is a fault and 
a hindrance to knowledge. What now is the cure ? No 
other but this, that every man should let alone others' 
prejudices and examine his own. Nobody is convinced 
of his by the accusation of another ; he recriminates by 
the same rule, and is clear. The only way to remove 
this great cause of ignorance and error out of the 
world is, for everyone impartially to examine himself. 
If others will not deal fairly with their own minds, does 
that make my errors truths, or ought it to make me 
in love with them and willing to impose on myself? 
If others love cataracts in their eyes, should that hinder 
me from couching 2 of mine as soon as I can ? Every- 
one declares against blindness, and yet who almost is 

1. Chimeras. Impossible creatures of the imagination. The 
idea is derived from the chimera of Greek mythology, which was a 
fire-breathing monster, whose body was part lion, part goat, and 
part dragon. 

2. Couching. A surgical operation, now rarely practiced, which 
consisted in removing a cataract by inserting a needle through the 
coats of the eye and pushing the lens downward to the bottom of 
the vitreous humor, so as to be out of the line of vision. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 51 

not fond of that which dims his sight, and keeps the 
clear light out of his mind, which should lead him 
into truth and knowledge? False or doubtful posi- 
tions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those 
in the dark from truth who build on them. Such are 
usually the prejudices imbibed from education, party, 
reverence, fashion, interest, etc. This is the mote 1 
which everyone sees in his brother's eye, but never 
regards the beam in his own. For who is there almost 
that is ever brought fairly to examine his own princi- 
ples, and see whether they are such as will bear the 
trial? But yet this should be one of the first things 
everyone should set about, and be scrupulous in, who 
would rightly conduct his understanding in the search 
of truth and knowledge. 

To those who are willing to get rid of this great 
hindrance of knowledge (for to such only I write), to 
those who would shake off this great and dangerous im- 
postor, prejudice, who dresses up falsehood in the like- 
ness of truth, and so dexterously hoodwinks men's 
minds as to keep them in the dark with a belief that 
they are more in the light than any that do not see 
with their eyes, 2 I shall offer this one mark whereby 
prejudice may be known. He that is strongly of any 
opinion must suppose (unless he be self-condemned) 
that his persuasion is built upon good grounds, and 
that his assent is no greater than what the evidence of 
the truth he holds forces him to, and that they are 
arguments, and not inclination or fancy, that make 
him so confident and positive in his tenets. Now if, 

1. This is the mote, etc. Cf. Matt. vii. 3. Keconstruct this 
sentence so as to make it grammatical. 

2. With their eyes. The word their is emphatic. 



52 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

after all his profession, he cannot bear any opposition 
to his opinion, if he cannot so much as give a patient 
hearing, much less examine and weigh the arguments 
on the other side, does he not plainly confess it is 
prejudice governs him? and it is not the evidence of 
truth, but some lazy anticipation, some beloved pre- 
sumption that he desires to rest undisturbed in. For 
if what he holds be, as he gives out, well fenced with 
evidence, and he sees it to be true, what need he fear 
to put it to the proof? If his opinion be settled upon 
a firm foundation, if the arguments that support it and 
have obtained his assent be clear, good, and convincing, 
why should he be shy to have it tried whether they be 
proof or not? He whose assent goes beyond this evi- 
dence, owes this excess of his adherence only to 
prejudice; and does in effect own it, when he refuses to 
hear what is offered against it, declaring thereby that 
it is not evidence he seeks, but the quiet enjoyment of 
the opinion he is fond of, with a forward condemna- 
tion of all that may stand in opposition to it, unheard 
and unexamined; which, what is it but prejudice? " qui 
sequum statuerit, parte inaudita altera, etiamsi 
aequum statuerit, haud sequus fuerit." 1 He that would 
acquit himself in this case as a lover of truth, not giv- 
ing way to any preoccupation or bias that may mis- 
lead him, must do two things that are not very common 
nor very easy. 

1. Qui sequum, etc. Inaccurately quoted from Seneca, "Medea," 
199, 200. 

" Qui statuit aliquid parte inaudita altera, 
JEquuni licet statuerit, haud aequus fuit." 

" Who has decided a question without hearing the other side, 
although he may have decided justly, yet has he not been just." 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 53 

11. Indifferency. — First, he must not be in love with 
any opinion, or wish it to be true till he knows it to be 
so; and then he will not need to wish it; for nothing 
that is false can deserve our good wishes, nor a desire 
that it should have the place and force of truth; and 
yet nothing is more frequent than this. Men are fond 
of certain tenets upon no other evidence but respect 
and custom, and think they must maintain them or 
all is gone, though they have never examined the 
ground they stand on, nor have ever made them out 
to themselves or can make them out to others. We 
should contend earnestly for the truth, but we should 
first be sure that it is truth, or else we fight against 
God, who is the God of truth, 1 and do the work of 
the devil, who is the father 2 and propagator of lies ; 
and our zeal, though ever so warm, will not excuse us, 
for this is plainly prejudice. 

12. Examine. 3 — Secondly, he must do that which he 
will find himself very averse to, as judging the thing 
unnecessary, or himself incapable of doing it. He 
must try whether his principles be certainly true or 
not, and how far he may safely rely upon them. This, 
whether fewer have the heart or the skill to do, I shall 
not determine, but this I am sure is that which every- 
one ought to do who professes to love truth, and would 
not impose upon himself, which is a surer way to be 
made a fool of than by being exposed to the sophistry 
of others. The disposition to put any cheat upon our- 
selves works constantly, and we are pleased with it, 
but are impatient of being bantered or misled by 

1. God of truth. Cf. Deut. xxxii. 4. 

2. Devil, who is the father, etc. Cf. John viii. 44. 

3. Examine. An antiquated form of the word examination. 



54 CONDUCT OF TEE UNDERSTANDING 

others. The inability I here speak of, is not any nat- 
ural defect that makes men incapable of examining 
their own principles. To such, rules of conducting 
their understandings are useless, and that is the case 
of very few. The great number is of those whom the 
ill habit of never exerting their thoughts has disabled; 
the powers of their minds are starved by disuse and 
have lost that reach and strength which nature fitted 
them to receive from exercise. Those who are in a 
condition to learn the first rules of plain arithmetic, 
and could be brought to cast up an ordinary sum, are 
capable of this, if they had but accustomed their 
minds to reasoning; but they that have wholly neg- 
lected the exercise of their understandings in this way, 
will be very far at first from being able to do it, and 
as unfit for it as one unpracticed in figures to cast 
up a shop-book, and perhaps think it as strange to be 
set about it. And yet it must nevertheless be con- 
fessed to be a wrong use of our understandings to 
build our tenets (in things where we are concerned to 
hold the truth) upon principles that may lead us into 
error. We take our principles at haphazard upon 
trust, and without ever having examined them, and 
then believe a whole system upon a presumption that 
they are true and solid : and what is all this but child- 
ish, shameful, senseless credulity? 

In these two things, viz., an equal indiff erency for all 
truth — I mean the receiving it, the love of it, as truth, 
but not loving it for any other reason, before we know 
it to be true— and in the examination of our princi- 
ples, and not receiving any for such, nor building on 
them, till we are fully convinced as rational creatures 
of their solidity, truth, and certainty, consists that 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 55 

freedom of the understanding 1 which is necessary to 
a rational creature, and without which it is not truly 
an understanding. It is conceit, fancy, extravagance, 
anything rather than understanding, if it must be 
under the constraint of receiving and holding opinions 
by the authority of anything but their own, not fan- 
cied, but perceived evidence. This was rightly called 
imposition and is of all other 2 the worst and most 
dangerous sort of it. For we impose upon ourselves, 
which is the strongest imposition of all others, and we 
impose upon ourselves in that part which ought with 
the greatest care to be kept free from all imposition. 
The world is apt to cast great blame on those who 
have an indifferency for opinions, especially in reli- 
gion. I fear this is the. foundation of great error and 
worse consequences. To be indifferent which of two 
opinions is true, is the right temper of the mind that 
preserves it from being imposed on, and disposes it 
to examine with that indifferency till it has done its 
best to find the truth; and this is the only direct and 
safe way to it. But to be indifferent whether we em- 
brace falsehood or truth is the great road to error. 
Those who are not indifferent which opinion is true are 
guilty of this; they suppose, without examining, that 



1. Freedom of the understanding. In Bk. II. ch. xxi. of the 
11 Essay," Locke states that the understanding and will are two fac- 
ulties of the mind. Then, in several succeeding sections, he goes 
on to show that there can be no such thing as freedom of the will, 
as freedom must belong to an agent and not to one of the faculties 
that he employs. It would seem, therefore, that there was an in- 
consistency in the use of the expression, " freedom of the under- 
standing." Yet Locke stands most strongly for an accurate use of 
terms. 

2. Of all other. A frequent fault in Locke's writings. 



56 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

what they hold is true, and then think they ought to 
be zealous for it. Those, it is plain by their warmth 
and eagerness, are not indifferent for their own 
opinions, but methinks are very indifferent whether 
they be true or false, since they cannot endure to have 
any doubts raised or objections made against them, 
and it is visible they never have made any themselves; 
and so never having examined them, know not, nor 
are concerned, as they should be, to know whether 
they be true or false. 

These are the common and most general miscarriages 
which I think men should avoid or rectify in a right 
conduct of their understandings, and should be par- 
ticularly taken care of in education.. The business 
whereof * in respect of knowledge, is not, as I think, 
to perfect a learner in all or any one of the sciences, 
but to give his mind that freedom, that disposition, 
and those habits that may enable him to attain any 
part of knowledge he shall apply himself to, or stand 
in need of, in the future course of his life. 



1. The business whereof. Locke's idea here is brought out 
more fully in his " Thoughts concerning Education." He would 
have the mind of the youth made not a storehouse for facts, but a 
ready tool in the possession of a skillful master. A brief extract 
from his treatise will suggest the way in which he regards the mat- 
ter : " The great work of a governor is to fashion the form and 
carriage of the mind ; to settle in his pupil good habits and the 
principles of virtue and wisdom ; to give him by little and little a 
view of mankind, and work him into a love and imitation of what 
is excellent and praiseworthy ; and in prosecution of it, to give him 
vigor, activity, and industry. The studies, which he sets him 
upon, are but as it were the exercises of his faculties and employ- 
ment of his time to keep him from sauntering and idleness, to 
teach him application, and accustom him to take pains, and to 
give him some little taste of what his own industry must perfect," 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 57 

This, and this only, is well principling, 1 and not the 
instilling a reverence and veneration for certain 
dogmas under the specious title of principles, which 
are often so remote from that truth and evidence 
which belongs to principles that they ought to be re- 
jected as false and erroneous, and often cause men so 
educated when they come abroad into the world and 
find they cannot maintain the principles so taken up 
and rested in, to cast off all principles, and turn per- 
fect skeptics, regardless of knowledge and virtue. 

There are several weaknesses and defects in the un- 
derstanding, either from the natural temper of the 
mind, or ill habits taken up, which hinder it in its 
progress to knowledge. Of these there are as many, 
possibly, to be found, if the mind were thoroughly 
studied, as there are diseases of the body, each whereof 
clogs and disables the understanding to some degree, 
and therefore deserves to be looked after and cured. 
I shall set down some few to excite men, especially 
those who make knowledge their business, to look into 
themselves, and observe whether they do not indulge 
some weaknesses, allow some miscarriages in the man- 
agement of their intellectual faculty which is preju- 
dicial to them in the search of truth. 

13. Observations. — Particular matters of fact are the 
undoubted foundations on which our civil and natural 
knowledge is built: the benefit the understanding 
makes of them is to draw from them conclusions which 
may be as standing rules of knowledge, and conse- 
quently of practice. The mind often makes not that 
benefit it should of the information it receives from 

1. Principling. Imbuing with general principles, the truth of 
which is taken for granted. Cf, section 6 on Principles. 



58 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

the accounts of civil or natural historians, by being 
too forward or too slow in making observations on the 
particular facts recorded in them. 

There are those who are very assiduous in reading, 
and yet do not much advance their knowledge by it. 
They are delighted with the stories that are told, and 
perhaps can tell them again, for they make all they 
read nothing but history x to themselves ; but not re- 
flecting on it, not making to themselves observations 
from what they read, they are very little improved by 
all that crowd of particulars that either pass through 
or lodge themselves in their understandings. They 
dream on in a constant course of reading and cram- 
ming themselves; but not digesting anything, it pro- 
duces nothing but a heap of crudities. 

If their memories retain well, one may say, they have 
the materials of knowledge, but like those for building 
they are of no advantage if there be no other use made 
of them but to let them lie heaped up together. Op- 
posite to these there are others, who lose the improve- 
ment they should make of matters of fact by a quite 
contrary conduct. They are apt to draw general con- 
clusions and raise axioms from every particular they 
meet with. These make as little true benefit of history 
as the other; nay, being of forward and active spirits, 
receive more harm by it, it being of worse consequence 
to steer one's thoughts by a wrong rule than to have 



1. History. Literally, the word means inquiry, hence the knowl- 
edge obtained by inquiry, and hence a collection of facts of any 
kind, this last being the meaning in Locke's time. Bacon says in 
his "Advancement of Learning": "History is Natural, Civil, 
Ecclesiastical, and Literary, whereof the three first I allow as ex- 
tant, the fourth I note as deficient." 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 59 

none at all, error doing to busy men much more barm 
than ignorance to the slow and sluggish. Between 
these, those seem to do best who, taking material and 
useful hints, sometimes from single matters of fact, 
carry them in their minds to be judged of by what 
they shall find in history to confirm or reverse their 
imperfect observations, which may be established into 
rules fit to be relied on when they are justified by a 
sufficient and wary induction of particulars. He that 
makes no such reflections on what he reads, only loads 
his mind with a rhapsody of tales, fit in winter nights 
for the entertainment of others; and he that will im- 
prove every matter of fact into a maxim, will abound 
in contrary observations that can be of no other use but 
to perplex and pudder 1 him if he compares them, or 
else to misguide him if he gives himself up to the 
authority of that which for its novelty or for some 
other fancy best pleases him. 

14. Bias. — Next to these we may place those who 
suffer their own natural tempers and passions they are 
possessed with to influence their judgments, especially 
of men and things that may any way relate to their 
present circumstances and interest. Truth is all sim- 
ple, all pure, will bear no. mixture of anything else 
with it. It is rigid and inflexible to any bye-interests, 2 
and so should the understanding be, whose use and 
excellency lie in conforming itself to it. To think of 
everything just as it is in itself, is the proper business 
of the understanding, though it be not that which men 

1. Pudder. Now obsolete. A form of potter or pother, meaning 
to perplex. 

2. Bye-interests. Self-interest or private advantage. The Cen- 
tury Dictionary gives by-interest as the only form. 



60 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

always employ it to. This all men at first hearing 
allow is the right use everyone should make of his 
understanding. Nobody will be at such an open de- 
fiance with common sense, as to profess that we should 
not endeavor to know and think of things as they are 
in themselves, and yet there is nothing more frequent 
than to do the contrary; and men are apt to excuse 
themselves, and think they have reason to do so, if they 
have but a pretense that it is for God, or a good cause ; 
that is, in effect, for themselves, their own persuasion 
or party : for those 1 in their turns the several sects of 
men, especially in matters of religion, entitle God and 
a good cause. But God requires not 2 men to wrong 
or misuse their faculties for him, nor to lie to others 
or themselves for his sake, which they purposely do 
who will not suffer their understandings to have right 
conceptions of the things proposed to them, and de- 
signedly restrain themselves from having just 
thoughts of everything, as far as they are concerned 
to inquire. And as for a good cause, that needs not 
such ill helps ; if it be good, truth will support it, and 
it has no need of fallacy or falsehood. 

15. Arguments. — Very much of kin to this is the 
hunting after arguments to make good one side of a 
question, and wholly to neglect and refuse those which 
favor the other side. What is this but willfully to 
misguide the understanding ? and is 3 so far from giv- 

1. For those. The original edition reads for to those, but this 
reading fails to convey an intelligible meaning. 

2. But God requires not, etc. Cf. Job xiii. 7. Note also in 
"Advancement of Learning," Bk. I., Bacon's version of what Job 
says : ' ■ Will you lie for God, as one man will do for another, to 
gratify him?" 

3. And is, etc. This should undoubtedly read, as Dr. Thomas 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 61 

ing truth its due value, that it wholly debases it: 
espouse opinions that best comport with their power, 
profit, or credit, and then seek arguments to support 
them? Truth lighted upon this way, is of no more 
avail to us than error, for what is so taken up by us 
may be false as well as true; and he has not done his 
duty who has thus stumbled upon truth in his way to 
preferment. 

There is another but more innocent way of collect- 
ing arguments very familiar among bookish men, 
which is to furnish themselves with the arguments they 
meet with pro and con in the questions they study. 
This helps them not to judge right nor argue strongly, 
but only to talk copiously on either side without being 
steady and settled in their own judgments: for such 
arguments gathered from other men's thoughts, float- 
ing only in the memory, are there ready indeed to 
supply copious talk with some appearance of reason, 
but are far from helping us to judge right. Such va- 
riety of arguments only distract x the understanding 
that relies on them, unless it has gone farther than 
such a superficial way of examining; this is to quit 
truth for appearance, only to serve our vanity. The 
sure and only way to get true knowledge, is to form 
in our minds clear settled notions of things, with 
names annexed to those determined ideas. 2 These we 
are to consider with their several relations and habi- 

Fowler suggests : " And it is so far from giving truth its due value, 
that it wholly debases it. Men espouse opinions that best comport 
with their power, profit, or credit, and then seek arguments to 
support them." 

1. Distract. Is this verb grammatically correct ? 

2. Determined ideas. See note 1, page 21, and note 1, page 33. 
Read also Books III. and IY. of the " Essay." 



62 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

tudes, and not amuse ourselves with floating names 
and words of indetermined signification which we can 
use in several senses to serve a turn. It is in the per- 
ception of the habitudes and respects our ideas have 
one to another that real knowledge consists, and when 
a man once perceives how far they agree or disagree 
one with another, he will be able to judge of what 
other people say, and will not need to be led by the 
arguments of others, which are many of them nothing 
but plausible sophistry. 1 This will teach him to state 
the question right, and see whereon it turns, and thus 
he will stand upon his own legs, and know by his 'own 
understanding. Whereas by collecting and learning 
arguments by heart, he* will be but a retailer to others; 
and when anyone questions the foundations they are 
built upon, he will be at a nonplus, and be fain to give 
up his implicit knowledge. 2 

16. Haste. — Labor for labor-sake 3 is against na- 
ture. The understanding, as well as all the other fac- 
ulties, chooses always the shortest way to its end, would 
presently obtain the knowledge it is about, and then 
set upon some new inquiry. But this, whether laziness 
or haste, often misleads it and makes it content itself 
with improper ways of search, and such as will not 



1. Sophistry. Keasoning which is sound only in appearance. 
The Sophists were Greek teachers of philosophy and rhetoric who, 
living before the development of logic and grammar, often failed 
to distinguish between reasoning and disputation, and so attached 
importance to quibbles and came to be held in contempt. 

2. Implicit knowledge. That which a man takes on faith as dis- 
tinguished from that which causes him to " stand upon his own 
legs." 

3. Labor-sake. Dr. Fowler prefers labor's sake, though the *s 
was not in the original edition. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 63 

serve the turn : sometimes it rests upon testimony when 
testimony of right has nothing to do. because it is 
easier to believe than to be scientifically instructed: 
sometimes it contents itself with one argument, and 
rests satisfied with that as it were a demonstration, 
whereas the thing under proof is not capable of demon- 
stration, and therefore must be submitted to the trial 
of probabilities, and all the material arguments pro and 
con be examined and brought to a balance. In some 
cases the mind is determined by probable topics x in in- 
quiries where demonstration may be had. All these, and 
several others, which laziness, impatience, custom, and 
want of use and attention lead men into, are misap- 
plications of the understanding in the search of truth. 
In every question, the nature and manner of the proof 
it is capable of should be considered, to make our in- 
quiry such as it should be. This would save a great 
deal of frequently misemployed pains, and lead us 
sooner to that discovery and possession of truth we are 
capable of. The multiplying variety of arguments, es- 
pecially frivolous ones, such as are all that are merely 
verbal, is not only lost labor, but cumbers the memory 
to no purpose, and serves only to hinder it from seiz- 
ing and holding of the truth in all those cases which 
are capable of demonstration. In such a way of proof, 
the truth and certainty is seen, and the mind fully 
possesses itself of it, when in the other way of assent it 
only hovers about it, is amused with uncertainties. In 
this superficial way, indeed, the mind is capable of 
more variety of plausible talk, but is not enlarged, as 
it should be, in its knowledge. It is to this same haste 

1. Probable topics. See note 2, page 43. 



64 CONDUCT OF THE UNDEESTANDING 

and impatience of the mind also, that a not due tracing 
of the arguments to their true foundation is owing; 
men see a little, presume a great deal, and so jump to 
the conclusion. 1 This is a short way to fancy and 
conceit, and (if firmly embraced) to opinionatry, 2 but 
is certainly the farthest way about to knowledge. For 
he that will know, must by the connection of the proofs 
see the truth and the ground it stands on; and there- 
fore if he has for haste skipt over what he should have 
examined, he must begin and go over all again, or 
else he will never come to knowledge. 

17. Desultory. — Another fault of as ill consequence 
as this, which proceeds also from laziness, with a mix- 
ture of vanity, is the skipping from one sort of knowl- 
edge to another. Some men's tempers are quickly 
weary of one thing. Constancy and assiduity is what 
they cannot bear: the same study long continued in 
is as intolerable to them, as the appearing long in the 
same clothes or fashion is to a court-lady. 

18. Smattering. — Others, that they may seem uni- 
versally knowing, get a little smattering in everything. 
Both these may fill their heads with superficial no- 
tions of things, but are very much out of the way of 
attaining truth or knowledge. 

19. Universality. — I do not here speak against the 
taking a taste of every sort of knowledge; it is cer- 
tainly very useful and necessary to form the mind; 
but then it must be done in a different way and to a 

1. Jump to the conclusion. Cf. Bacon's expression, "the antici- 
pation of the mind." 

2. Opinionatry. Also written opiniatrity and opiniastrety, an 
obsolete word from the French opinidtrete, meaning stubbornness 
of opinion. The modern form is opinionativeness . 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 65 

different end. ISTot for talk and vanity to fill the head 
with shreds of all kinds, that he who is possessed of 
such a frippery may be able to match the discourses 
of all he shall meet with, as if nothing could come 
amiss to him, and his head was so well stored a maga- 
zine that nothing could be proposed which he was not 
master of, and was readily furnished to entertain any- 
one on. This is an excellency indeed, and a great one 
too, to have a real and true knowledge in all or most 
of the objects of contemplation. But it is what the 
mind of one and the same man can hardly attain unto, 
and the instances are so few of those who have in any 
measure approached towards it, that I know not 
whether they are to be proposed as examples in the 
ordinary conduct of the understanding. For a man to 
understand fully the business of his particular calling 
in the commonwealth, and of religion, which is his 
calling as he is a man in the world, is usually enough 
to take up his whole time; and there are few that in- 
form themselves in these, which is every man's proper 
and peculiar business, so to the bottom as they should 
do. But though this be so, and there are very few men 
that extend their thoughts towards universal knowl- 
edge, yet I do not doubt but if the right way were 
taken, and the methods of inquiry were ordered as they 
should be, men of little business and great leisure 
might go a great deal further in it than is usually 
done. To turn to the business in hand, the end and 
use of a little insight in those parts of knowledge which 
are not a man's proper business, is to accustom our 
minds to all sorts of ideas, and the proper ways of ex- 
amining their habitudes and relations. This gives the 
mind a freedom, and the exercising the understanding 



66 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

in the several ways of inquiry and reasoning which the 
most skillful have made use of, teaches the mind sa- 
gacity and wariness, and a suppleness to apply itself 
more closely and dexterously to the bents and turns 
of the matter in all its researches. Besides, this uni- 
versal taste of all the sciences with an indifferency be- 
fore the mind is possessed with any one in particular, 
and grown into love and admiration of what is made 
its darling, will prevent another evil very commonly 
to be observed in those who have from the beginning 
been seasoned only by one part of knowledge. Let a 
man be given up to the contemplation of one sort of 
knowledge, and that will become everything. 1 The 
mind will take such a tincture from a familiarity with 
that object, that everything else, how remote soever, 
will be brought under the same view. A metaphysician 
will bring plowing and gardening immediately to ab- 
stract notions, the history of nature shall signify noth- 
ing to him. An alchemist, on the contrary, shall re- 
duce divinity to the maxims of his laboratory: explain 
morality by sal, sulphur, and mercury, 2 and allegorize 
the scripture itself, and the sacred mysteries thereof, 
into the philosopher's stone. And I heard once a man 
who had a more than ordinary excellency in music seri- 
ously accommodate Moses' seven days of the first week 

1. That will become everything. Cf. Bacon, "Novum Orga- 
num," Bk. I. Aph. 54. 

2. Sal, sulphur and mercury. These were held by the alchemists 
to be the universal constituents of inorganic matter. Paracelsus 
(see note 1, page 106) was the first to include animal and vegetable 
bodies in the same classification. He held that the health of an or- 
ganism depends on the continuance of the true proportions between 
these ingredients. By the promulgation of this theory, he brought 
about a union between chemistry and medicine. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 67 

to the notes of music, as if from thence had been taken 
the measure and method of the creation. It is of no 
small consequence to keep the mind from such a pos- 
session, which I think is best done by giving it a fair 
and equal view of the whole intellectual world, wherein 
it may see the order, rank, and beauty of the whole, 
and give a just allowance to the distinct provinces of 
the several sciences in the due order and usefulness 
of each of them. 

If this be that which old men will not think neces- 
sary, nor be easily brought to, it is fit at least that it 
should be practiced in the breeding of the young. The 
business of education, as I have already observed, 1 is 
not as I think to make them perfect in any one of the 
sciences, but so to open and dispose their minds as 
may best make them capable of any when they shall 
apply themselves to it. If men are for a long time 
accustomed only to one sort or method of thoughts, 
their minds grow stiff in it, and do not readily turn 
to another. It is therefore to give them this freedom 
that I think they should be made to look into all sorts 
of knowledge, and exercise their understandings in so 
wide a variety and stock of knowledge. But I do not 
propose it as a variety and stock of knowledge, but a 
variety and freedom of thinking, as an increase of the 
powers and activity of the mind, not as an enlargement 
of its possessions. 

20. Reading, 2 — This is that which I think great 
readers are apt to be mistaken in. Those who have 

1. As I have already observed. Cf. section 12. See also note 1, p. 56. 

2. Reading. Bacon says in his Essay, "Of Studies": "Read 
not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, 
nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some 



68 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

read of everything are thought to understand every- 
thing too, but it is not always so. Reading furnishes 
the mind only with materials of knowledge, it is think- 
ing makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminat- 
ing kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with 
a great load of collections; unless we chew them over 
again they will not give us strength and nourishment. 
There are indeed in some writers visible instances of 
deep thoughts, close and acute reasoning, and ideas 
well pursued. The light these would give would be of 
great use if their reader would observe and imitate 
them; all the rest at best are but particulars fit to be 
turned into knowledge, but that can be done only by 
our own meditation and examining the reach, force, 
and coherence of what is said, and then as far as we 
apprehend and see the connection of ideas so far it is 
ours; without that it is but so much loose matter float- 
ing in our brain. The memory may be stored, but the 
judgment is little better, and the stock of knowledge 
not increased by being able to repeat what others have 
said or produce the arguments we have found in them. 
Such a knowledge as this is but knowledge by hearsay, 
and the ostentation of it is at best but talking by rote, 
and very often upon weak and wrong principles. For 
all that is to be found in books is not built upon true 
foundations, nor always rightly deduced from the prin- 

books are to be tasted, some are to be swallowed, and some few are 
to be chewed and digested. That is, some books are to be read 
only in parts, others are to be read, but not curiously ; and some 
few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some 
books also may be read by deputy and extracts made of them by 
others ; but that would be only in the less important arguments, 
and the meaner sort of books ; else distilled books are, like common 
distilled waters, flashy things." 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 69 

ciples it is pretended to be built on. Such an examen 
as is requisite to discover, that every reader's mind is 
not forward to make, especially in those who have 
given themselves up to a party, and only hunt for 
what they can scrape together that may favor and sup- 
port the tenets of it. Such men willfully exclude 
themselves from truth, and from all true benefit to be 
received by reading. Others of more indifferency often 
want attention and industry. The mind is backward 
in itself to be at the pains to trace every argument to 
its original, and to see upon what basis it stands and 
how firmly; but yet it is this that gives so much the 
advantage to one man more than another in reading. 
The mind should by severe rules be tied down to this, 
at first, uneasy task; use and exercise will give it fa- 
cility. So that those who are accustomed to it readily, 
as it were with one cast of the eye, take a view of the 
argument, and presently, in most cases, see where it 
bottoms. Those who have got this faculty, one may 
say, have got the true key of books, and the clew to 
lead them through the mizmaze 1 of variety of opin- 
ions and authors to truth and certainty. This young 
beginners should be entered in, and showed the use of, 
that they might profit by their reading. Those who 
are strangers to it will be apt to think it too great a 
clog in the way of men's studies, and they will suspect 
they shall make but small progress if in the books they 
read they must stand to examine and unravel every 
argument, and follow it step by step up to its original. 
I answer, this is a good objection, and ought to 
weigh with those whose reading is designed for much 

1. Mizmaze. A labyrinth. 



70 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

talk and little knowledge, and I have nothing to say to 
it. But I am here inquiring into the conduct of the 
understanding in its progress towards knowledge; and 
to those who aim at that I may say, that he who fair 
and softly goes 1 steadily forward in a course that 
points right, will sooner be at his journey's end than 
he that runs after everyone he meets, though he gallop 
all day full speed. 

To which let me add, that this way of thinking on 
and profiting by what we read will be a clog and rub 
to anyone only in the beginning: when custom and 
exercise have made it familiar, it will be dispatched on 
most occasions without resting or interruption in the 
course of our reading. The motions and views of a 
mind exercised that way are wonderfully quick, and 
a man used to such sort of reflections sees as much at 
one glimpse as would require a long discourse to lay 
before another, and make out in an entire and gradual 
deduction. Besides that, when the first difficulties are 
over, the delight and sensible advantage it brings 
mightily encourages and enlivens the mind in reading, 
which without this is very improperly called study. 

21. Intermediate Principles.— As a help to this, I 
think it may be proposed that, for the saving the long 
progression of the thoughts to remote and first princi- 
ples in every case, the mind should provide it several 
stages ; that is to say intermediate principles 2 which 
it might have recourse to in the examining those posi- 

1. He who fair and softly goes. This suggests the fable of the 
hare and the tortoise. 

2. Intermediate principles. Those principles which, having been 
once established, maybe relied upon in further reasoning as hav- 
ing the authority of first principles. Bacon calls them, in the 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 71 

tions that come in its way. These, though they are 
not self-evident principles, yet if they have been made 
out from them by a wary and unquestionable deduc- 
tion, may be depended on as certain and infallible 
truths, and serve as unquestionable truths to prove 
other points depending on them by a nearer and shorter 
view than remote and general maxims. These may 
serve as landmarks to show what lies in the direct way 
of truth, or is quite beside it. And thus mathema- 
ticians do, who do not in every new problem run it 
back to the first axioms, through all the whole train 
of intermediate propositions. Certain theorems that 
they have settled to themselves upon sure demonstra- 
tion, serve to resolve to them multitudes of proposi- 
tions which depend on them, and are as firmly made 
out from thence as if the mind went afresh over every 
link of the whole chain that ties them to first self- 
evident principles. Only in other sciences great care 
is to be taken that they establish those intermediate 
principles with as much caution, exactness, and indif- 
ferency as mathematicians use in the settling any of 
their great theorems. When this is not done, but men 
take up the principles in this or that science upon 
credit, inclination, interest, etc., in haste, without due 
examination and most unquestionable proof, they lay 
a trap for themselves, and, as much as in them lies, 
captivate their understandings to mistake falsehood 
and error. 
22. Partiality. 1 — As there is a partiality to opinions, 

"Novum Organum," Bk. I. Aph. 104, the middle axioms, and 
says : " But the middle are the true and solid and living axioms, on 
which depend the affairs and fortunes of men." 
1. Partiality. Cf. this section with section 19. 



12 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

which, as we have already observed, is apt to mislead 
the understanding, so there is often a partiality to 
studies which is prejudicial also to knowledge and im- 
provement. Those sciences which men are particularly 
versed in they are apt to value and extol, as if that 
part of knowledge which everyone has acquainted him- 
self with were that alone which was worth the having, 
and all the rest were idle and empty amusements, com- 
paratively of no use or importance. This is the effect 
of ignorance and not knowledge, the being vainly 
puffed up with a flatulency arising from a weak and 
narrow comprehension. It is not amiss that everyone 
should relish the science that he has made his peculiar 
study; a view of its beauties and a sense of its useful- 
ness carry a man on with the more delight and warmth 
in the pursuit and improvement of it. But the con- 
tempt of all other knowledge, as if it were nothing in 
comparison of law or physic, of astronomy or chemis- 
try, or perhaps some yet meaner part of knowledge 
wherein I have got some smattering or am somewhat 
advanced, is not only the mark of a vain or little mind, 
but does this prejudice in the conduct of the under- 
standing, that it coops up within narrow bounds, and 
hinders it looking abroad into other provinces of the 
intellectual world, more beautiful possibly, and more 
fruitful than that which it had till then labored in, 
wherein it might find, besides new knowledge, ways or 
hints whereby it might be enabled the better to culti- 
vate its own. 

23. Theology.— There is indeed one science (as they 
are now distinguished) incomparably above all the 
rest, where it is not by corruption narrowed into a 
trade or faction for mean or ill ends and secular in- 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 73 

terests; I mean theology, which, containing the knowl- 
edge of God and his creatures, our duty to him and 
our fellow-creatures, and a view of our present and 
future state, is the comprehension of all other knowl- 
edge directed to its true end; i. e., the honor and ven- 
eration of the Creator and the happiness of mankind. 
This is that noble study which is every man's duty, 
and everyone that can be called a rational creature is 
capable of. The works of nature and the words of 
revelation x display it to mankind in characters so 
large and visible, that those who are not quite blind 
may in them read and see the first principles and most 
necessary parts of it, and from thence, as they have 
time and industry, may be enabled to go on to the more 
abstruse parts of it, and penetrate into those infinite 
depths filled with the treasures of wisdom and knowl- 
edge. This is that science which would truly enlarge 
men's minds were it studied or permitted to be studied 
everywhere with that freedom, love of truth, and char- 
ity which it teaches, and were not made, contrary to its 
nature, the occasion of strife, faction, malignity, and 
narrow impositions. I shall say no more here of this, 
but that it is undoubtedly a wrong use of my under- 
standing to make it the rule and measure of another 
man's, a use which it is neither fit for nor capable of. 

24. Partiality. — This partiality, where it is not per- 
mitted an authority to render all other studies insig- 
nificant or contemptible, is often indulged so far as to 
be relied upon and made use of in other parts of knowl- 

1. The works of nature and the words of revelation. This ex- 
pression suggests the distinction strongly emphasized in Locke's 
time and in the following century, between natural and revealed 
religion. 



74 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

edge to which it does not at all belong, and wherewith 
it has no manner of affinity. Some men have so used 
their heads to mathematical figures, that giving a 
preference to the methods of that science, they intro- 
duce lines and diagrams into their study of divinity 
or politic inquiries as if nothing could be known with- 
out them; and others accustomed to retired specula- 
tions run natural philosophy into metaphysical no- 
tions and the abstract generalities of logic: and how 
often may one meet with religion and morality treated 
of in the terms of the laboratory, and thought to be 
improved by the methods and notions of chemistry? 
But he that will take care of the conduct of his under- 
standing, to direct it right to the knowledge of things, 
must avoid those undue mixtures, and not by a fond- 
ness for what he has found useful and necessary in 
one, transfer it to another science, where it serves only 
to perplex and confound the understanding. It is a 
certain truth that " res nolunt male administrari ; " x 
it is no less certain " res nolunt male intelligi." 1 
Things themselves are to be considered as they are in 
themselves, and then they will show us in what way 
they are to be understood. For to have right concep- 
tions about them we must bring our understandings to 
the inflexible nature and unalterable relations of 
things, and not endeavor to bring things to any pre- 
conceived notions of our own. 

There is another partiality very commonly observa- 
ble in men of study no less prejudicial or ridiculous 
than the former, and that is a fantastical and wild at- 
tributing all knowledge to the ancients alone, or to the 

1. Res nolunt male administrari. Matters do not like to be badly 
managed ; intelligi, to be understood, 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 16 

moderns. This raving upon antiquity in matter of 
poetry, Horace has wittily described and exposed in 
one of his satires. 1 The same sort of madness may 
be found in reference to all the other sciences. Some 
will not admit an opinion not authorized by men of 
old, who were then all giants in knowledge. Nothing 
is to be put into the treasury of truth or knowledge 
which has not the stamp of Greece or Rome upon it, 
and since their days will scarce allow that men have 
been able to see, think, or write. Others, with a like 
extravagancy, contemn all that the ancients have 
left us, and being taken with the modern inventions 
and discoveries, lay by all that went before, as if what- 
ever is called old must have the decay of time upon it, 
and truth too were liable to mold and rottenness. 2 

1. Satires. The passage here referred to is probably from the 
"Epistles" of Horace, Bk. II. Epistle I. A portion of Creech's 
translation reads as follows : 

11 If length of time will better verse like wine, 
Give it a brisker taste, and make it fine ; 
Come tell me then, I would be gladly showed, 
How many years will make a poem good : 
One poet writ an hundred years ago, 
What, is he old, and therefore famed, or no ? 
Or is he new, and therefore bold appears ? 
Let's fix upon a certain term of years. 
He's good that lived an hundred years ago, 
Another wants but one, is he so too ? 
Or is he new, and damned for that alone ? 
Well, he's good too, and old that wants but one. 
And thus I'll argue on, and bate one more, 
And so by one and one waste all the store ; 
And so confute him, who esteems by years, 
A poem's goodness from the date it bears, 
Who not admires, nor yet approves a line, 
But what is old, and death hath made divine." 

2. Mold and rottenness. Cf. Bacon, " Novum Organum," 



76 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

Men I think have been much the same for natural en- 
dowments in all times. Fashion, discipline, and edu- 
cation have put eminent differences in the ages of 
several countries : and made one generation much differ 
from another in arts and sciences: but truth is always 
the same; time alters it not, nor is it the better or 
worse for being of ancient or modern tradition. Many 
were eminent in former ages of the world for their 
discovery and delivery of it; but though the knowledge 
they have left us be worth our study, yet they ex- 
hausted not all its treasure; they left a great deal for 
the industry and sagacity of after-ages, and so shall we. 
That was once new to them which anyone now receives 
with veneration for its antiquity, nor was it the worse 
for appearing as a novelty; and that which is now em- 
braced for its newness, will to posterity be old, but not 
thereby be less true or less genuine. There is no occa- 
sion on this account to oppose the ancients and the 
moderns to one another, or to be squeamish on either 
side. He that wisely conducts his mind in the pur- 
suit of knowledge, will gather what lights and get what 
helps he can from either of them, from whom they are 

Bk. I. Aph. 56 : " There are found some minds given to an extreme 
admiration of antiquity, others to an extreme love and appetite 
for novelty ; but few so duly tempered that they can hold the 
mean, neither carping at what has been well laid down by the 
ancients, nor despising what is well introduced by the moderns. 
This however turns to the great injury of the sciences and phi- 
losophy ; since these affectations of antiquity and novelty are the 
humors of partisans rather than judgments ; and truth is to be 
sought for not in the felicity of any age, which is an unstable 
thing, but in the light of nature and experience, which is eternal. 
These factions therefore must be abjured, and care must be taken 
that the intellect be not hurried by them into assent." Cf. also 
Bk. I. Aph. 84. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 11 

best to be had, without adoring the errors or rejecting 
the truths which he may find mingled in them. 

Another partiality may be observed in some to vul- 
gar, in others to heterodox tenets; some are apt to 
conclude that what is the common opinion cannot but 
be true; so many men's eyes they think cannot but see 
right, so many men's understandings of all sorts can- 
not be deceived, and therefore will not venture to look 
beyond the received notions of the place and age, nor 
have so presumptuous a thought as to be wiser than 
their neighbors. They are content to go with the 
crowd, and so go easily, which they think is going 
right, or at least serves them as well. But however 
" vox populi vox Dei " x has prevailed as a maxim, yet 
I do not remember wherever God delivered his oracles 
by the multitude, or nature truths by the herd. On the 
other side, some fly all common opinions as either false 
or frivolous. The title of many-headed beast is a suf- 
ficient reason to them to conclude that no truths of 
weight or consequence can be lodged there. Vulgar 
opinions are suited to vulgar capacities, and adapted to 
the end of those that govern. He that will know the 
truth of things must leave the common and beaten 
track, which none but weak and servile minds are satis- 
fied to trudge along continually in. Such nice palates 
relish nothing but strange notions quite out of the 
way : whatever is commonly received has the mark of 
the beast 2 on it, and they think it a lessening to them 
to hearken to it or receive it : their mind runs only 
after paradoxes; these they seek, these they embrace, 

1. Vox populi vox Dei. The voice of the people is the voice of 
God. 

2. Mark of the beast. Cf. Rev. xiii., especially verses 16 and 17. 



78 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

these only they vent, and so as they think distinguish 
themselves from the vulgar. But common or uncom- 
mon are not the marks to distinguish truth or false- 
hood, and therefore should not be any bias to us in 
our inquiries. We should not judge of things by men's 
opinions, but of opinions by things. The multitude 
reason but ill, and therefore may be well suspected, 
and cannot be relied on, nor should be followed as a 
sure guide; but philosophers who have quitted the 
orthodoxy of the community and the popular doctrines 
of their countries have fallen into as extravagant and 
as absurd opinions as ever common reception coun- 
tenanced. It would be madness to refuse to breathe the 
common air or quench one's thirst with water because 
the rabble use them to these purposes; and if there are 
conveniences of life which common use reaches not, it 
is not reason to reject them because they are not grown 
into the ordinary fashion of the country, and every 
villager doth not know them. 

Truth, whether in or out of fashion, is the measure 
of knowledge and the business of the understanding; 
whatsoever is besides that, however authorized by con- 
sent or recommended by rarity, is nothing but igno- 
rance or something worse. 

Another sort of partiality there is whereby men im- 
pose upon themselves, and by it make their reading 
little useful to themselves. I mean the making use of 
the opinions of writers and laying stress upon their 
authorities wherever they find them to favor their own 
opinions. 

There is nothing almost has done more harm to men 
dedicated to letters than giving the name of study to 
reading, and making a man of great reading to be 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDEBSTANDING 79 

the same with a man of great knowledge, or at least 
to be a title of honor. All that can be recorded in 
writing are only facts or reasonings. Facts are of 
three sorts: 1. Merely of natural agents observable in 
the ordinary operations of bodies one upon another, 
whether in the visible course of things left to them- 
selves, or in experiments made by them, applying 
agents and patients to one another after a peculiar and 
artificial manner. 2. Of voluntary agents, more espe- 
cially the actions of men in society, which makes civil 
and moral history. 3. Of opinions. 

In these three consists, as it seems to me, that which 
commonly has the name of learning; to which perhaps 
some may add a distinct head of critical writings, 
which indeed at bottom is nothing but matter of fact, 
and resolves itself into this, that such a man or set 
of men used such a word or phrase in such a sense, 
i. e., that they made such sounds the marks of such 
ideas. 

Under reasonings I comprehend all the discoveries 
of general truths made by human reason, whether 
found by intuition, demonstration, or probable deduc- 
tions. And this is that which is, if not alone, knowl- 
edge (because the truth or probability of particular 
propositions may be known too), yet is, as may be sup- 
posed, most properly the business of those who pretend 
to improve their understandings and make themselves 
knowing by reading. 

Books and reading are looked upon to be the great 
helps of the understanding and instruments of knowl- 
edge, as it must be allowed that they are; and yet I 
beg leave to question whether these do not prove a 
hindrance to many, and keep several bookish men from 



80 CONDUCT OF TEE UNDERSTANDING 

attaining to solid and true knowledge. This I think I 
may be permitted to say, that there is no part wherein 
the understanding needs a more careful and wary con- 
duct than in the use of books, 1 without which they will 
prove rather innocent amusements than profitable em- 
ployments of our time, and bring but small additions 
to our knowledge. 

There is not seldom 2 to be found, even amongst 
those who aim at knowledge, who with an unwearied 
industry employ their whole time in books, who 
scarcely allow themselves time to eat or sleep, but read, 
and read, and read on, yet make no great advances in 
real knowledge, though there be no defect in their 
intellectual faculties to which their little progress can 
be imputed. The mistake here is, that it is usually 
supposed that by reading, the author's knowledge is 
transfused into the reader's understanding; and so it 
is, but not by bare reading, but by reading and under- 
standing what he wrote. Whereby I mean, not barely 
comprehending what is affirmed or denied in each 
proposition (though that great readers do not always 
think themselves concerned precisely to do), but to see 
and follow the train of his reasonings, observe the 
strength and clearness of their connection, and ex- 
amine upon what they bottom. Without this a man 
may read the discourses of a very rational author, 
written in a language and in propositions that he very 
well understands, and yet acquire not one jot of his 
knowledge, which consisting only in the perceived, cer- 

1. Use of books. Ke-read the quotation from Bacon given in 
note 2. page 67. 

2. There is not seldom. Becast this sentence so as to make it 
grammatical. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 81 

tain, or probable connection of the ideas made use of 
in his reasonings, the reader's knowledge is no further 
increased than he perceives that; so much as he sees 
of this connection, so much he knows of the truth or 
probability of that author's opinions. 

All that he relies on without this perception he takes 
upon trust, upon the author's credit, without any 
knowledge of it at all. This makes me not at all won- 
der to see some men so abound in citations and build 
so much upon authorities, it being the sole foundation 
on which they bottom most of their own tenets ; so that 
in effect they have but a second-hand or implicit knowl- 
edge, i. e., are in the right if such an one from whom 
they borrowed it were in the right in that opinion 
which they took from him; which indeed is no knowl- 
edge at all. Writers of this or former ages may be 
good witnesses of matters of fact which they deliver, 
which we may do well to take upon their authority; 
but their credit can go no further than this; it cannot 
at all affect the truth and falsehood of opinions which 
have no other sort of trial but reason and proof, which 
they themselves made use of to make themselves know- 
ing; and so must others too that will partake in their 
'knowledge. Indeed it is an advantage that they have 
been at the pains to find out the proofs and lay them 
in that order that may show the truth or probability 
of their conclusions, and for this we owe them great 
acknowledgments for saving us the pains in searching 
out those proofs which they have collected for us, and 
which possibly after all our pains we might not have 
found nor been able to have set them in so good a 
light as that which they left them us in. Upon this ac- 
count we are mightily beholden to judicious writers 



82 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

of all ages for those discoveries and discourses they 
have left behind them for our instruction if we know 
how to make a right use of them, which is not to run 
them over in a hasty perusal, and perhaps lodge their 
opinions or some remarkable passages in our mem- 
ories, but to enter into their reasonings, examine their 
proofs, and then judge of the truth or falsehood, proba- 
bility, or improbability of what they advance, not by 
any opinion we have entertained of the author, but by 
the evidence he produces and the conviction he affords 
us drawn from things themselves. Knowing is seeing, 
and if it be so, it is madness to persuade ourselves 
that we do so by another man's eyes, let him use ever 
so many words to tell us that what he asserts is very 
visible. Till we ourselves see it with our own eyes and 
perceive it by our own understandings, we are as much 
in the dark and as void of knowledge as before, let us 
believe any learned author as much as we will. 

Euclid and Archimedes x are allowed to be knowing 
and to have demonstrated what they say, and yet who- 
ever shall read over their writings without perceiving 
the connection of their proofs, and seeing what they 
show, though he may understand all their words, yet he 
is not the more knowing: he may believe indeed, but 
does not know what they say, and so is not advanced 
one jot in mathematical knowledge by all his reading 
of those approved mathematicians. 

25. Haste. — The eagerness and strong bent of the 
mind after knowledge, if not warily regulated, is often 

1. Euclid and Archimedes. The former, a famous Greek 
geometrician who lived at Alexandria about 300 b. c. ; the latter, 
the most famous of ancient geometricians, who lived from about 
287 to 212 B. c. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 83 

a hindrance to it. It still presses into further discov- 
eries and new objects, and catches at the variety of 
knowledge, and therefore often stays not long enough 
on what is before it to look into it as it should, for 
haste to pursue what is yet out of sight. He that 
rides post through a country may be able from the 
transient view to tell how in general the parts lie, and 
may be able to give some loose description of here a 
mountain and there a plain, here a morass and there 
a river, woodland in one part and savannahs x in 
another. Such superficial ideas and observations as 
these he may collect in galloping over it; but the more 
useful observations of the soil, plants, animals, and 
inhabitants, with their several sorts and properties, 
must necessarily escape him; and it is seldom men 
ever discover the rich mines without some digging. 
Xature commonly lodges her treasure and jewels in 
rocky ground. If the matter be knotty and the sense 
lies deep, the mind must stop and buckle to it, and 
stick upon it with labor and thought and close con- 
templation, and not leave it till it has mastered the 
difficulty and got possession of truth. But here care 
must be taken to avoid the other extreme ; a man must 
not stick 2 at every useless nicety, and expect mys- 
teries of science in every trivial question or scruple 
that he may raise. He that will stand to pick up and 
examine every pebble that comes in his way, is as un- 
likely to return enriched and laden with jewels, as the 

1. Savannahs. Originally savana from Spanish sabana, a 
prairie, or broad open tract of land covered with native 
vegetation. 

2. stick. Consult the dictionary for the distinction between 
the use of the word here and its use in the preceding sentence. 



84 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

other that traveled full speed. Truths are not the 
better nor the worse for their obviousness or difficulty, 
but their value is to be measured by their usefulness 
and tendency. Insignificant observations should not 
take up any of our minutes, and those that enlarge 
our view and give light towards further and useful dis- 
coveries, should not be neglected, though they stop our 
course and spend some of our time in a fixed attention. 
There is another haste that does often and will mis- 
lead the mind if it be left to itself and its own con- 
duct. The understanding is naturally forward, not 
only to learn its knowledge by variety (which makes it 
skip over one to get speedily to another part of knowl- 
edge), but also eager to enlarge its views by running 
too fast into general observations and conclusions with- 
out a due examination of particulars enough whereon 
to found those general axioms. 1 This seems to en- 
large their stock, but it is of fancies, not realities; 
such theories, built upon narrow foundations, stand 
but weakly, and if they fall not of themselves, are at 
least very hardly to be supported against the assaults 
of opposition. And thus men being too hasty to erect 
to themselves general notions and ill-grounded the- 
ories, find themselves deceived in their stock of knowl- 



1. Those general axioms. Cf. Bacon, " Novum Organum," 
Bk. I. Aph. 25: "The axioms now in use, having been suggested 
by a scanty and manipular experience and a few particulars of 
most general occurrence, are made for the most part just large 
enough to fit and take these in ; and therefore it is no wonder 
if they do not lead to new particulars. And if some opposite 
instance, not observed or not known before, chance to come in the 
way, the axiom is rescued and preserved by some frivolous dis- 
tinction ; whereas the truer course would be to correct the axiom 
itself." 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 85 

edge when they come to examine their hastily assumed 
maxims themselves or to have them attacked by others. 
General observations drawn from particulars are the 
jewels of knowledge, comprehending great store in a 
little room; but they are therefore to be made vvith 
the greater care and caution, lest if we take counter- 
feit for true our loss and shame be the greater when 
our stock comes to a severe scrutiny. One or two par- 
ticulars may suggest hints of inquiry, and they do well 
to take those hints; but if they turn them into con- 
clusions, and make them presently general rules, they 
are forward indeed, but it is only to impose on them- 
selves by propositions assumed for truths without suf- 
ficient warrant. To make such observations is, as has 
been already remarked, 1 to make the head a maga- 
zine of materials which can hardly be called knowl- 
edge, or at least it is but like a collection of lumber 
not reduced to use or order; and he that makes every- 
thing an observation has the same useless plenty and 
much more falsehood mixed with it. The extremes 
on both sides are to be avoided, and he will be able 
to give the best account of his studies who keeps his 
understanding in the right mean between them. 

26. Anticipation. — "Whether it be a love of that which 
brings the first light and information to their minds, 
and want of vigor and industry to inquire ; or else that 
men content themselves with any appearance of knowl- 
edge, right or wrong, which when they have once got 
they will hold fast ; this is visible, that many men give 
themselves up to the first anticipations of their 
minds, 2 and are very tenacious of the opinions that 

1. As has been already remarked. See section 13. 

2. Anticipations of their minds. Locke has in mind the men 



86 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

first possess them ; they are as often fond of their first 
conception as of their first-born, and will by no means 
recede from the judgment they have once made, or 
any conjecture or conceit which they have once enter- 
tained. This is a fault in the conduct of the under- 
standing, since this firmness or rather stiffness of the 
mind is not from an adherence to truth, but a sub- 
mission to prejudice. It is an unreasonable homage 
paid to prepossession, whereby we show a reverence not 
to (what we pretend to seek) truth, but what by hap- 
hazard we chance to light on, be it what it will. This 
is visibly a preposterous use of our faculties, and is a 
downright prostituting of the mind to resign it thus 
and put it under the power of the first comer. This 
can never be allowed or ought to be followed as a right 
way to knowledge, till the understanding (whose busi- 
ness it is to conform itself to what it finds in the ob- 
jects without) can by its own opinionatry change that, 
and make the unalterable nature of things comply with 
its own hasty determinations, which will never be. 
Whatever we fancy, things keep their course, and the 
habitudes, correspondences, and relations keep the 
same to one another. 

27. Resignation.— Contrary to these, but by a like 
dangerous excess on the other side, are those who al- 
ways resign their judgment to the last man they heard 
or read. Truth never sinks into these men's minds nor 
gives any tincture to them, but chameleon-like, they 
take the color of what is laid before them, and as soon 

to whom he refers in section 16 who "see a little, presume a great 
deal, and so jump to the conclusion." Bacon has much to say 
about the " anticipations of the mind" and their inability to dis- 
cover new truths 



CONDUCT OF TEE UNDERSTANDING 87 

lose and resign it to the next that happens to come in 
their way. The order wherein opinions are proposed or 
received by us is no rale of their rectitude, nor ought to 
be a cause of their preference. First or last in this 
case is the effect of chance, and not the measure of 
truth or falsehood. This everyone must confess, and 
therefore should in the pursuit of truth keep his mind 
free from the influence of any such accidents. A man 
may as reasonably draw cuts for his tenets, regulate 
his persuasion by the cast of a die, as take it up for its 
novelty, or retain it because it had his first assent and 
he was never of another mind. Well-weighed reasons 
are to determine the judgment ; those the mind should 
be always ready to hearken and submit to, and by their 
testimony and suffrage entertain or reject any tenet 
indifferently, whether it be a perfect stranger or an old 
acquaintance. 

28. Practice. — Though the faculties of the mind are 
improved by exercise, yet they must not be put to a 
stress beyond their strength. " Quid valeant humeri, 
quid ferre recusent," 1 must be made the measure of 
everyone's understanding who has a desire not only to 
perform well but to keep up the vigor of his faculties, 
and not to balk his understanding by what is too hard 
for it. The mind by being engaged in a task beyond 
its strength, like the body strained by lifting at a 
weight too heavy, has often its force broken, and 
thereby gets an unaptness or an aversion to any 

1. Quid valeant, etc. Horace, " Ars Poetica," 11. 39, 40 : 

11 Et versate diu, quid ferre recusent, 
Quid valeant humeri." 
11 And often try what weight you can support, 
And what your shoulders are too weak to bear." 



88 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

vigorous attempt ever after. A sinew cracked seldom 
recovers its former strength, or at least the tenderness 
of the sprain remains a good while after, and the 
memory of it longer, and leaves a lasting caution in 
the man not to put the part quickly again to any robust 
employment. So it fares in the mind once jaded by an 
attempt above its power; it either is disabled for the 
future, or else checks at any vigorous undertaking ever 
after, at least is very hardly x brought to exert its 
force again on any subject that requires thought and 
meditation. The understanding should be brought to 
the difficult and knotty parts of knowledge that try 
the strength of thought and a full bent of the mind 
by insensible degrees, and in such a gradual proceed- 
ing nothing is too hard for it. Nor let it be objected 
that such a slow progress will never reach the extent 
of some sciences. It is not to be imagined how far 
constancy will carry a man ; however, it is better walk- 
ing slowly in a rugged way than to break a leg and be 
a cripple. He that begins with the calf may carry 
the ox, but he that will at first go to take up an ox 
may so disable himself as not to be able to lift up a 
calf after that. When the mind by insensible degrees 
has brought itself to attention and close thinking, it 
will be able to cope with difficulties and master them 
without any prejudice to itself, and then it may go on 
roundly. Every abstruse problem, every intricate 
question, will not baffle, discourage, or break it. But 
though putting the mind unprepared upon an unusual 
stress that may discourage or damp it for the future 
ought to be avoided, yet this must not run it by an 

1. Very hardly. With great difficulty. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 89 

over-great shyness of difficulties into a lazy sauntering 
about ordinary and obvious things that demand no 
thought or application. This debases and enervates 
the understanding, makes it weak and unfit for labor. 
This is a sort of hovering about the surface of things 
without any insight into them or penetration; and 
when the mind has been once habituated to this lazy 
recumbency and satisfaction on the obvious surface 
of things, it is in danger to rest satisfied there and go 
no deeper, since it cannot do it without pains and dig- 
ging. He that has for some time accustomed himself 
to take up with what easily offers itself at first view, 
has reason to fear he shall never reconcile himself to 
the fatigue of turning and tumbling things in his 
mind to discover their more retired and more valuable 
secrets. 

It is not strange that methods of learning which 
scholars have been accustomed to in their beginning 
and entrance upon the sciences should influence them 
all their lives, and be settled in their minds by an over- 
ruling reverence; especially if they be such as uni- 
versal use has established. Learners must at first be 
believers, and their master's rules having been once 
made axioms to them, it is no wonder they should keep 
that dignity, 1 and by the authority they have once 
got, mislead those who think it sufficient to excuse 
them if they go out of their way in a well-beaten 
track. 

29. Words. — I have copiously enough spoken of the 



1. Dignity. Dr. Fowler suggests that there is here a play upon 
words, as dignitas, according to good Latin usage, is a synonym 
for axiom. 



90 CONDUCT OF THE UNDEBSTANDING 

abuse of words 1 in another place, and therefore shall 
upon this reflection, that the sciences are full of them, 
warn those that would conduct their understandings 
right not to take any term, 2 howsoever authorized by 
the language of the schools, to stand for anything till 
they have an idea of it. A word may be of frequent 
use and great credit with several authors, and be by 
them made use of as if it stood for some real being; 
but yet, if he that reads cannot frame any distinct 
idea of that being, it is certainly to him a mere empty 
sound without a meaning, and he learns no more by all 
that is said of it or attributed to it than if it were 
affirmed only of that bare empty sound. They who 
would advance in knowledge, and not deceive and swell 
themselves with a little articulated air, 3 should lay 
down this as a fundamental rule, not to take words 
for things, nor suppose that names in books signify 
real entities in nature, till they can frame clear and 
distinct ideas of those entities. It will not perhaps be 
allowed, if I should set down " substantial forms " and 
" intentional species," 4 as such that may justly be sus- 
pected to be of this kind of insignificant 5 terms. 

1. Abuse of words. This is the subject of chapter x. in Bk. III. 
of the " Essay on the Human Understanding." 

2. Not to take any term. In the " Essay," Bk. III. ch. xi. § 8, Locke 
says : " A man shall take care to use no word without a signinca- 
cation, no name without an idea for which he makes it stand." 

3. Articulated air. The " mere empty sound" of the voice 
spoken of in the preceding sentence. 

4. Substantial forms and intentional species. A substantial 
form was regarded as the power inherent in any class of substances 
that caused it to produce the manifestations peculiar to that class. 
An intentional species was supposed to be the similitude of an out- 
ward object that mediated between that object and the mind. 

5. Insignificant, Meaningless, 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 91 

But this I am sure, to one that can form no determined 
ideas of what they stand for, they signify nothing at 
all, and all that he thinks he knows about them is to 
him so much knowledge about nothing, and amounts 
at most but to be a learned ignorance. It is not with- 
out all reason supposed that there are many such 
empty terms to be found in some learned writers, to 
which they had recourse to etch 1 out their systems, 
where their understandings could not furnish them 
with conceptions from things. But yet I believe the 
supposing of some realities in nature answering those 
and the like words, have much perplexed some and 
quite misled others in the study of nature. That which 
in any discourse signifies, " I know not what," should be 
considered " I know not when." Where men have any 
conceptions, they can, if they are never so abstruse or 
abstracted, explain them and the terms they use for 
them. For our conceptions being nothing but ideas, 
which are all made up of simple ones, 2 if they cannot 
give us the ideas their words stand for it is plain they 
have none. To what purpose can it be to hunt after 
his conceptions who has none, or none distinct? he 
that knew not what he himself meant by a learned 
term, cannot make us know anything by his use of it, 
let us beat our heads about it never so long. Whether 
we are able to comprehend all the operations of nature 
and the manners of them, it matters not to inquire, 
but this is certain, that we can comprehend no more 
of them than we can distinctly conceive, and therefore 
to obtrude terms where we have no distinct concep- 

1. Etch. An obsolete form of eke, to supply what is lacking. 

2. All made up of simple ones. This refers to complex ideas, 
which subject is fully treated in Bk. II. ch. xii. of the li Essay." 



92 CONDUCT OF THE UNDEESTANDINO 

tions, as if they did contain, or rather conceal some- 
thing, is but an artifice of learned vanity to cover a 
defect in an hypothesis or our understandings. Words 
are not made to conceal, but to declare and show 
something; where they are by those who pretend to in- 
struct otherwise used, they conceal indeed something; 
but that that they conceal is nothing but the igno- 
rance, error, or sophistry of the talker, for there is in 
truth nothing else under them. 

30. Wandering. 1 — That there is a constant suc- 
cession and flux of ideas in our minds I have observed 
in the former part of this essay, and everyone may 
take notice of it in himself. This, I suppose, may de- 
serve some part of our care in the conduct of our un- 
derstandings ; and I think it may be of great advantage 
if we can by use get that power over our minds, as to 
be able to direct that train of ideas, that so, since 
there will new ones perpetually come into our thoughts 
by a constant succession, we may be able by choice so 
to direct them, that none may come in view but such 
as are pertinent to our present inquiry, and in such 
order as may be most useful to the discovery we are 
upon; or, at least, if some foreign and unsought ideas 
will offer themselves, that yet we might be able to 
reject them and keep them from taking off our minds 
from its present pursuit, and hinder them from run- 
ning away with our thoughts quite from the subject 
in hand. This is not, I suspect, so easy to be done as 
perhaps may be imagined; and yet, for aught I know, 
this may be, if not the chief, yet one of the great dif- 
ferences that carry some men in their reasoning so far 

1. Wandering. Cf. this section with the Sections (123-127) on 
Sauntering in the " Thoughts concerning Education." 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 93 

beyond others, where they seem to be naturally of equal 
parts. A proper and effectual remedy for this wander- 
ing of thoughts I would be glad to find. He that shall 
propose such an one would do great service to the 
studious and contemplative part of mankind, and per- 
haps help unthinking men to become thinking. I must 
acknowledge that hitherto I have discovered no other 
way to keep our thoughts close to their business, but 
the endeavoring as much as we can, and by frequent 
attention and application, getting the habit of atten- 
tion and application. He that will observe children 
will find that even when they endeavor their utmost 
they cannot keep their minds from straggling. The 
way to cure it, I am satisfied, is not angry chiding or 
beating, for that presently fills their heads with all the 
ideas that fear, dread, or confusion can offer to them. 
To bring back gently their wandering thoughts, by 
leading them into the path and going before them in 
the train they should pursue, without any rebuke, or 
so much as taking notice (where it can be avoided) 
of their roving, I suppose, would sooner reconcile and 
inure them to attention than all these rougher methods, 
which more distract their thought, and hindering the 
application they would promote, introduce a contrary 
habit. 

31. Distinction. — Distinction and division x are (if 
I mistake not the import of the words) very different 
things; the one being the perception of a difference 

1. Distinction and division. In this section, Locke's evident at- 
tempt to make the subject perfectly clear has tended rather to ob- 
scure it. He undoubtedly, however, means to commend division as 
being a perception of the natural differences in things, whereas he 
condemns distinction as being the recognition of artificial differ- 



94 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

that nature has placed in things ; the other, our making 
a division where there is yet none; at least if it may be 
permitted to consider them in this sense, I think I may 
say of them, that one of them is the most necessary and 
conducive to true knowledge that can be; the other, 
when too much made use of, serves only to puzzle and 
confound the understanding. To observe every the 
least difference that is in things argues a quick and 
clear sight, and this keeps the understanding steady 
and right in its way to knowledge. But though it be 
useful to discern every variety that is to be found in 
nature, yet it is not convenient to consider every dif- 
ference that is in things, and divide them into distinct 
classes under every such difference. This will run us, 
if followed, into particulars (for every individual has 
something that differences it from another), and we 
shall be able to establish no general truths, or else 
at least shall be apt to perplex the mind about them. 
The collection of several things into several classes 
gives the mind more general and larger views, but we 
must take care to unite them ©nly in that, and so far 
as they do agree, for so far they may be united under 
the consideration; for entity itself, that comprehends 
all things, as general as it is, may afford us clear and 
rational conceptions. If we would weigh and keep in 
our minds what it is we are considering, that would 
best instruct us when we should or should not branch 
into further distinctions, which are not to be taken 
only from a due contemplation of things, to which 

ences in words of equivocal meaning. The obscurity produced 
among the schoolmen by the multiplying of these distinctions, lie 
speaks of in the " Essay" as having "yet passed hitherto under 
the laudable and esteemed names of subtilty and acuteness." 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 95 

there is nothing more opposite than the art of verba] 
distinctions made at pleasure in learned and arbitrarily 
invented terms, to be applied at a venture, without 
comprehending or conveying any distinct notions, and 
so altogether fitted to artificial talk or empty noise in 
dispute, without any clearing of difficulties or advance 
in knowledge. Whatsoever subject we examine and 
would get knowledge in, we should, I think, make as 
general and as large as it will bear; nor can there be 
any danger of this, if the idea of it be settled and de- 
termined: for if that be so, we shall easily distinguish 
it from any other idea, though comprehended under 
the same name. For it is to fence against the entan- 
glements of equivocal words, and the great art of soph- 
istry which lies in them, that distinctions have been 
multiplied and their use thought so necessary. But 
had every distinct abstract idea a distinct known name, 
there would be little need of these multiplied scholastic 
distinctions, though there would be nevertheless as 
much need still of the mind's observing the differences 
that are in things, and discriminating them thereby 
one from another. It is not therefore the right way 
to knowledge to hunt after and fill the head with 
abundance of artificial and scholastic distinctions, 
wherewith learned men's writings are often filled : we 
sometimes find what they treat of so divided and sub- 
divided that the mind of the most attentive reader 
loses the sight of it, as it is more than probable the 
writer himself did; for in things crumbled into dust 
it is in vain to affect or pretend order, or expect clear- 
ness. To avoid confusion by too few or too many 
divisions, is a great skill in thinking as well as writ- 
ing, which is but the copying our thoughts; but what 



96 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

are the boundaries of the mean between the two vicious 
excesses on both hands, I think is hard to set down in 
words : clear and distinct ideas are all that I yet know 
able to regulate it. But as to verbal distinctions re- 
ceived and applied to common terms, i. e., equivocal 
words, they are more properly, I think, the business 
of criticisms and dictionaries than of real knowledge 
and philosophy, since they for the most part explain 
the meaning of words, and give us their several sig- 
nifications. The dexterous management of terms, and 
being able to fend and prove with them, I know has 
and does pass in the world for a great part of learn- 
ing; but it is learning distinct from knowledge, for 
knowledge consists only in perceiving the habitudes 
and relations of ideas one to another, which is done 
without words ; the intervention of a sound helps noth- 
ing to it. And hence we see that there is least use of 
distinctions where there is most knowledge, I mean in 
mathematics, where men have determined ideas with- 
out known names to them, and so there being no room 
for equivocations, there is no need of distinctions. In 
arguing, the opponent uses as comprehensive and 
equivocal terms as he can, to involve his adversary in 
the doubtfulness of his expressions: this is expected, 
and therefore the answerer on his side makes it his 
play to distinguish as much as he can, and thinks he 
can never do it too much; nor can he indeed in that 
way wherein victory may be had without truth and 
without knowledge. This seems to me to be the art of 
disputing. Use your words as captiously as you can in 
your arguing on one side, and apply distinctions as 
much as you can on the other side to every term, to 
nonplus your opponent, so that in this sort of scholar- 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 97 

ship, there being no bounds set to distinguishing, some 
men have thought all acuteness to have lain in it, and 
therefore in all they have read or thought on, their 
great business has been to amuse themselves with dis- 
tinctions, and multiply to themselves divisions; at 
least, more than the nature of the thing required. 
There seems to me, as I said, to be no other rule for 
this but a due and right consideration of things as 
they are in themselves. He that has settled in his 
mind determined ideas, with names affixed to them, 
will be able both to discern their differences one from 
another, which is really distinguishing; and where the 
penury of words affords not terms answering every 
distinct idea, will be able to apply proper distinguish- 
ing terms to the comprehensive and equivocal names 
he is forced to make use of. This is all the need I 
know of distinguishing terms, and in such verbal dis- 
tinctions each term of the distinction, joined to that 
whole signification it distinguishes, is but a distinct 
name for a distinct idea. Where they are so, and men 
have clear and distinct conceptions that answer their 
verbal distinctions, they are right, and are pertinent as 
far as they serve to clear anything in the subject under 
consideration. And this is that which seems to me the 
proper and only measure of distinctions and divisions, 
which he that will conduct his understanding right 
must not look for in the acuteness of invention nor the 
authority of writers, but will find only in the considera- 
tion of things themselves, whether he is led into it by 
his own meditations or the information of books. 
An aptness * to jumble things together wherein can 

1. An aptness, etc. In the ''Novum Organum," Bk. I. Aph. 55, 
Bacon says : "Some minds are stronger and apter to mark the dif- 



08 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

be found any likeness, is a fault in the understanding 
on the other side which will not fail to mislead it, and 
by thus lumping of things, hinder the mind from dis- 
tinct and accurate conceptions of them. 

32. Similes. — To which let me here add another near 
of kin to this, at least in name, and that is letting the 
mind, upon the suggestion of any new notion, run 
immediately after similes to make it the clearer to 
itself, which, though it may be a good way and useful 
in the explaining our thoughts to others, yet it is by 
no means a right method to settle true notions of any- 
thing in ourselves, because similes always fail in some 
part, and come short of that exactness which our con- 
ceptions should have to things if we would think 
aright. This indeed makes men plausible talkers, for 
those are always most acceptable in discourse 1 who 
have the way to let their thoughts into other men's 
minds with the greatest ease and facility; whether 
those thoughts are well formed and correspond with 
things matters not; few men care to be instructed but 
at an easy rate. They who in their discourse strike 
the fancy, and take the hearers' conceptions along with 
them as fast as their words flow, are the applauded 
talkers, and go for the only men of clear thoughts. Noth- 
ing contributes so much to this as similes, whereby 
men think they themselves understand better, because 

ferences of things, others to mark their resemblances. The steady 
and acute mind can fix its contemplations and dwell and fasten on 
the subtlest distinctions : the lofty and discursive mind recognizes 
and puts together the finest and most general resemblances. Both 
kinds, however, easily err in excess by catching, the one at grada- 
tions, the other at shadows." 

1. Most acceptable in discourse. Locke himself is said by his 
biographers to have been most fascinating in conversation. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 99 

they are the better understood. But it is one thing 
to think right and another thing to know the right 
way to lay our thoughts before others with advantage 
and clearness, be they right or wrong. Well-chosen 
similes, 1 metaphors, and allegories, with method and 
order, do this the best of anything, because being 
taken from objects already known and familiar to the 
understanding, they are conceived as fast as spoken, 
and the correspondence being concluded, the thing 
they are brought to explain and elucidate is thought 
to be understood too. Thus fancy passes for knowl- 
edge, and what is prettily said is mistaken for solid. 
I say not this to decry metaphor, or with design to 
take away that ornament of speech; my business here 
is not with rhetoricians and orators, but with philos- 
ophers and lovers of truth, to whom I would beg leave 
to give this one rule whereby to try whether in the 
application of their thoughts to anything for the im- 
provement of their knowledge, they do in truth com- 
prehend the matter before them really such as it is in 
itself. The way to discover this is to observe whether 
in the laying it before themselves or others, they make 
use only of borrowed representations and ideas foreign 
to the things which are applied to it by way of accom- 
modation, as bearing some proportion or imagined like- 
ness to the subject under consideration.. Figured and 
metaphorical expressions do well to illustrate more 
abstruse and unfamiliar ideas which the mind is not 
yet thoroughly accustomed to, but then they must be 
made use of to illustrate ideas that we already have, 

1. Well-chosen similes, etc. Note Locke's frequent use of fig- 
ures, and observe to what extent he follows the directions that he 
here lays down. 

L.cfC. ' 



100 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

not to paint to us those which we yet have not. Such 
borrowed and allusive ideas may follow real and solid 
truth, to set it off when found, but must by no means 
be set in its place and taken for it. If all our search 
has yet reached no further than simile and metaphor, 
we may assure ourselves we rather fancy than know, 
and have not yet penetrated into the inside and reality 
of the thing, be it what it will, but content ourselves 
with what our imaginations, not things themselves, 
furnish us with. 

33. Assent. 1 — In the whole conduct of the under- 
standing, there is nothing of more moment than to 
know when and where, and how far to give assent, and 
possibly there is nothing harder. It is very easily said, 
and nobody questions it, that giving and withholding 
our assent and the degrees of it should be regulated 
by the evidence which things carry with them ; and yet 
we see men are not the better for this rule ; some firmly 
embrace doctrines upon slight grounds, some upon no 
grounds, and some contrary to appearance: some ad- 
mit of certainty, and are not to be moved in what they 
hold; others waver in everything, and there want not 
those that reject all as uncertain. What then shall a 
novice, an inquirer, a stranger do in the case? I 
answer, use his eyes. There is a correspondence in 
things, and agreement and disagreement in ideas, dis- 
cernible in very different degrees, and there are eyes in 
men to see them if they please; only their eyes may 
be dimmed or dazzled, and the discerning sight in 
them impaired or lost. Interest and passion dazzle; 

1. Assent. Probability and Degrees of Assent are fully dis- 
cussed in the " Essay," Bk. IV. chs. xv. and xvi. These chapters 
should be carefully read. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 101 

the custom of arguing on any side, even against our 
persuasions, dims the understanding, and makes it by 
degrees lose the faculty of discerning clearly between 
truth and falsehood, and so of adhering to the right 
side. It is not safe to play with error and dress it up 
to ourselves or others in the shape of truth. The mind 
by degrees loses its natural relish of real solid truth, 
is reconciled insensibly to anything that can be dressed 
up into any feint appearance of it; and if the fancy 
be allowed the place of judgment at first in sport, it 
afterwards comes by use to usurp it, and what is rec- 
ommended by this flatterer (that studies but to please) 
is received for good. There are so many ways of fal- 
lacy, such arts of giving colors, appearances, and re- 
semblances by this court-dresser, the fancy, that he who 
is not wary to admit nothing but truth itself, very 
careful not to make his mind subservient to anything 
else, cannot but be caught. He that has a mind to be- 
lieve, has half assented already; and he that by often 
arguing against his own sense imposes falsehood on 
others, is not far from believing himself. This takes 
away the great distance there is betwixt truth and 
falsehood; it brings them almost together, and makes 
it no great odds in things that approach so near which 
you take; and when things are brought to that pass, 
passion, or interest, etc., easily, and without being per- 
ceived, determine which shall be the right. 

34. Indifferency. — I have said above 1 that we should 
keep a perfect indifferency for all opinions, not wish 
any of them true, or try to make them appear so, but 
being indifferent, receive and embrace them according 

1. Said above. See section 11 on the same subject. 



102 CONDUCT OF THE UNDEESTANDING 

as evidence, and that alone, gives the attestation of 
truth. They that do thus, i. e., keep their minds indif- 
ferent to opinions, to be determined only by evidence, 
will always find the understanding has perception 
enough to distinguish between evidence and no evi- 
dence, betwixt plain and doubtful; and if they neither 
give nor refuse their assent but by that measure, they 
will be safe in the opinions they have. Which being 
perhaps but few, this caution will have also this good 
in it, that it will put them upon considering, and teach 
them the necessity of examining more than they do; 
without which the mind is but a receptacle of incon- 
sistencies, not the storehouse of truths. They that do 
not keep up this indifferency in themselves for all but 
truth, not supposed, but evidenced in themselves, put 
colored spectacles before their eyes, and look on things 
through false glasses, and then think themselves ex- 
cused in following the false appearances which they 
themselves put upon them. I do not expect that by 
this way the assent should in everyone be proportioned 
to the grounds and clearness wherewith every truth 
is capable to be made out, or that men should be per- 
fectly kept from error; that is more than human na- 
ture can by any means be advanced to; I aim at no 
such unattainable privilege: I am only speaking of 
what they should do, who would deal fairly with their 
own minds, and make a right use of their faculties in 
the pursuit of truth; we fail them a great deal more 
than they fail us. It is mismanagement more than 
want of abilities that men have reason to complain of, 
and which they actually do complain of in those that 
differ from them. He that by indifferency for all but 
truth, suffers not his assent to go faster than his evi- 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 103 

dence, nor beyond it, will learn to examine, and ex- 
amine fairly instead of presuming, and nobody will be 
at a loss or in danger for want of embracing those 
truths which are necessary in his station and circum- 
stances. In any other way but this all the world are 
born to orthodoxy; 1 they imbibe at first the allowed 
opinions of their country and party, and so never ques- 
tioning their truth, not one of a hundred ever ex- 
amines. They are applauded for presuming they are 
in the right. He that considers, is a foe to orthodoxy, 
because possibly he may deviate from some of the 
received doctrines there. And thus men, without any 
industry or acquisition of their own, inherit local 
truths (for it is not the same everywhere) and are 
inured to assent without evidence. This influences fur- 
ther than is thought, for what one of a hundred of the 
zealous bigots in all parties ever examined the tenets 
he is so stiff in, or ever thought it his business or duty 
so to do? It is suspected of lukewarmness to suppose 
it necessary, and a tendency to apostasy to go about 
it. And if a man can bring his mind once to be posi- 
tive and fierce for positions whose evidence he has 
never once examined, and that in matters of greatest 
concernment to him, what shall keep him from this 
short and easy way of being in the right in cases of 
less moment? Thus we are taught to clothe our minds 
as we do our bodies, after the fashion in vogue, and 
it is accounted fantasticalness, or something worse, 
not to do so. This custom (which who dares oppose?) 
makes the short-sighted bigots and the warier skeptics, 

1. Orthodoxy. In general, a prevalent body of opinions. Orig- 
inally, the word referred to a belief in the doctrines of the Roman 
Catholic Church. 



104 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

as far as it prevails; and those that break from it are 
in danger of heresy: for taking the whole world, how 
mnch of it doth truth and orthodoxy possess together ? 
Though it is by the last alone (which has the good 
luck to be everywhere) that error and heresy are judged 
of: for argument and evidence signify nothing in the 
case, and excuse nowhere, but are sure to be borne 
down in all societies by the infallible orthodoxy of 
the place, Whether this be the way to truth and right 
assent, let the opinions that take place and prescribe 
in the several habitable parts of the earth declare. I 
never saw any reason yet why truth might not be 
trusted on its own evidence : I am sure if that be not 
able to support it there is no fence against error, and 
then truth and falsehood are but names that stand 
for the same things. Evidence therefore is that by 
which alone every man is (and should be) taught to 
regulate his assent, who is then, and then only, in the 
right way when he follows it. 

Men deficient in knowledge are usually in one of 
these three states : either wholly ignorant, or as doubt- 
ing of some proposition they have either embraced 
formerly, or are at present inclined to; or lastly, they 
do with assurance hold and profess without ever hav- 
ing examined and being convinced by well-grounded 
arguments. 

The first of these are in the best state of the three, 
by having their minds yet in their perfect freedom 
and indifferency, the likelier to pursue truth the better, 
having no bias yet clapped on to mislead them. 

35. Ignorance with Indifferency.— For ignorance, with 
an indifferency for truth, is nearer to it than opinion 
with ungrounded inclination, which is the great source 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 105 

of error; and they are more in danger to go out of the 
way who are marching under the conduct of a guide 
that it is a hundred to one will mislead them, than 
he that has not yet taken a step, and is likelier to be 
prevailed on to inquire after the right way. The last 
of the three sorts are in the worst condition of all; for 
if a man can be persuaded and fully assured of any- 
thing for a truth, without having examined, what is 
there that he may not embrace for truth? and if he 
has given himself up to believe a lie, what means is 
there left to recover one who can be assured without 
examining? To the other two, this I crave leave to 
say, that as he that is ignorant is in the best state 
of the two, so he should pursue truth in a method 
suitable to that state; i. e., by inquiring directly into 
the nature of the thing itself, without minding the 
opinions of others, or troubling himself with their 
questions or disputes about it; but to see what he 
himself can, sincerely searching after truth, find out. 
He that proceeds upon other principles in his inquiry 
into any sciences, though he be resolved to examine 
them and judge of them freely, does yet at least put 
himself on that side, and post himself in a party which 
he will not quit till he be beaten out; by which the 
mind is insensibly engaged to make what defense it 
can, and so is unawares biased. I do not say but a 
man should embrace some opinion when he has ex- 
amined, else he examines to no purpose; but the surest 
and safest way is to have no opinion at all till he has 
examined, and that without any the least regard to the 
opinions or systems of other men about it. For ex- 
ample, were it my business to understand physic, would 
not the safe and readier way be to consult nature her- 



106 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

self, and inform myself in the history of diseases and 
their cures, than espousing the principles of the dog- 
matists, methodists, or chemists, 1 to engage in all the 
disputes concerning either of those systems, and sup- 
pose it to be true, till I have tried what they can say 
to beat me out of it? Or, supposing that Hippoc- 
rates, 2 or any other book, infallibly contains the 
whole art of physic; would not the direct way be to 
study, read, and consider that book, weigh and com- 
pare the parts of it to find the truth, rather than es- 
pouse the doctrines of any party? who, though they 
acknowledge his authority, have already interpreted 
and wiredrawn all his text to their own sense; the 
tincture whereof when I have imbibed, I am more in 
danger to misunderstand his true meaning, than if I 
had come to him with a mind unprepossessed by doc- 
tors and commentators of my sect, whose reasonings, 
interpretation, and language which I have been used 
to, will of course make all chime that way, and make 
another, and perhaps the genuine, meaning of the au- 
thor seem harsh, strained, and uncouth to me. For 
words having naturally none of their own, carry that 
signification to the hearer that he is used to put upon 
them, whatever be the sense of him that uses them. 



1. Dogmatists, methodists, or chemists. These were schools of 
medicine. The dogmatists relied on deductions of reason rather 
than on the conclusions of observation and experience. These 
claimed Hippocrates as their founder. The methodists came later 
and proposed a new method, basing their doctrine on the theory of 
Atomism. The chemists were the followers of Paracelsus lb. 1493), 
who taught healing by the use of drugs. 

2. Hippocrates. The great physician of Cos, who lived about 
460 b. c. He has been called the " Father of Medicine." Of. this 
section with section 21 on "Intermediate Principles." 



CONDUCT OF TEE UNDERSTANDING 10 1 

This, I think, is visibly so; and if it be, he that begins 
to have any doubt of any of his tenets, which he re- 
ceived without examination, ought as much as he can, 
to put himself wholly into this state of ignorance in 
reference to that question; and throwing wholly by all 
his former notions, and the opinions of others, ex- 
amine, with a perfect indifferency, the question in its 
source, without any inclination to either side or any 
regard to his or others' unexamined opinions. This 
I own is no easy thing to do; but I am not inquiring 
the easy way to opinion, but the right way to truth, 
which they must follow who will deal fairly with their 
own understandings and their own souls. 

36. Question. — The indifferency that I here propose 
will also enable them to state the question right which 
they are in doubt about, without which they can never 
come to a fair and clear decision of it. 

37. Perseverance. — Another fruit from this indiffer- 
ency, and the considering things in themselves abstract 
from our own opinions and other men's notions and 
discourses on them, will be, that each man will pursue 
his thoughts in that method which will be most agree- 
able to the nature of the thing, and to his apprehen- 
sion of what it suggests to him, in which he ought to 
proceed with regularity and constancy, until he come 
to a well-grounded resolution wherein he may ac- 
quiesce. If it be objected that this will require every 
man to be a scholar, and quit all his other business 
and betake himself wholly to study, I answer, I pro- 
pose no more to anyone than he has time for. Some 
men's state and condition require no great extent of 
knowledge; the necessary provision for life swallows 
the greatest part of their time. But one man's want 



108 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

of leisure is no excuse for the oscitancy 1 and ig- 
norance of those who have time to spare ; and everyone 
has enough to get as much knowledge as is required 
and expected of him, and he that does not that is in 
love with ignorance, and is accountable for it. 

38. Presumption. — The variety of distempers in 
men's minds is as great as of those in their bodies; 
some are epidemic, few escape them ; and everyone too, 
if he would look into himself, would find some defect 
of his particular genius. There is scarce anyone with- 
out some idiosyncrasy that he suffers by. This man 
presumes upon his parts, that they will not fail him 
at time of need; and so thinks it superfluous labor to 
make any provision beforehand. His understanding is 
to him like Fortunatus's purse, 2 which is always to 
furnish him, without ever putting anything into it 
beforehand; and so he sits still satisfied, without en- 
deavoring to store his understanding with knowledge. 
It is the spontaneous product of the country, and what 
need of labor in tillage? Such men may spread their 
native riches before the ignorant; but they were best 
not to come to stress and trial with the skillful. We 
are born ignorant of everything. The superficies of 
things that surround them make impressions on the 
negligent, but nobody penetrates into the inside with- 
out labor, attention, and industry. Stones and timber 

1. Oscitancy. Laziness. Look up the derivation of this 
word. 

2. Fortunatus's purse. The Encyclopaedia Britanuica furnishes 
an account of Fortunatus, the legendary hero of a popular Eu- 
ropean chapbook. After many adventures, he met the goddess of 
Fortune and received from her a purse which was always ready to 
supply his needs. The story has been dramatized and adapted in 
many languages. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 109 

grow of themselves, but yet there is no uniform pile 
with symmetry and convenience to lodge in without 
toil and pains. God? has made the intellectual world 
harmonious and beautiful without us ; but it will never 
come into our heads all at once ; we must bring it home 
piecemeal, and there set it up by our own industry, 
or else we shall have nothing but darkness and a chaos 
within, whatever order and light there be in things 
without us. 

39. Despondency. — On the other side, there are others 
that depress their own minds, despond at the first dif- 
ficulty, and conclude that the getting an insight in any 
of the sciences, or making any progress in knowledge 
further than serves their ordinary business, is above 
their capacities. These sit still, because they think 
they have not legs to go ; as the others I last mentioned 
do, because they think they have wings to fly, and can 
soar on high when they please. To these latter one 
may for answer apply the proverb, " Use legs and have 
legs." Nobody knows what strength of parts he has 
till he has tried them. And of the understanding one 
may most truly say, that its force is greater generally 
than it thinks, till it is put to it. " Viresque acquirit 
eundo." * 

And therefore the proper remedy here is but to set 
the mind to work, and apply the thoughts vigorously 
to the business; for it holds in the struggles of the 
mind as in those of war, " dum putant se vincere, 
vicere." 2 A persuasion that we shall overcome any 

1. Viresque acquirit eundo. The translation reads, " And gains 
strength by going." This is taken from Virgil's description of 
Rumor, in the "^Eneid," Bk. IV. 1. 175. 

2. Dum putant se vincere, vicere. Livy, Bk. II. ch. lxiv : im- 



110 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

difficulties that we meet with in the sciences seldom 
fails to carry us through them. Nobody knows the 
strength of his mind, and the force of steady and regu- 
lar application, till he has tried. This is certain, he 
that sets out upon weak legs, will not only go further, - 
but grow stronger too than one who, with a vigorous 
constitution and firm limbs, only sits still. 

Something of kin to this men may observe in them- 
selves, when the mind frights itself (as it often does) 
with anything reflected on in gross, and transiently 
viewed confusedly and at a distance. Things thus 
offered to the mind carry the show of nothing but dif- 
ficulty in them, and are thought to be wrapt up in im- 
penetrable obscurity. But the truth is, these are noth- 
ing but specters that the understanding raises to itself 
to flatter its own laziness. It sees nothing distinctly 
in things remote and in a huddle and therefore con- 
cludes too faintly, that there is nothing more clear 
t he discovered in them. It is but to approach nearer, 
and that mist of our own raising that enveloped them 
will remove; and those that in that mist appeared hid- 
eous giants not to be grappled with, will be found to 
be of the ordinary and natural size and shape. Things 
that in a remote and confused view seem very obscure, 
must be approached by gentle and regular steps; and 
what is most visible, easy, and obvious in them first 
considered. Reduce them into their distinct parts ; and 
then in their due order bring all that should be known 

petu facto, dum se putant vincere, vicere. " An attack being made, 
while they think they are conquering, they have conquered." 
Virgil expresses a similar idea in the "iEneid," Bk. V. -1.231.: Eos 
successus alit : possunt quia posse videntur. " Success encourages 
them : they are able because they seem to be able." 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 111 

concerning every one of those parts into plain and sim- 
ple questions; and then what was thought obscure, per- 
plexed, and too hard for our weak parts, will lay itself 
open to the understanding in a fair view, and let the 
mind into that which before it was awed with, and 
kept at a distance from, as wholly mysterious. I ap- 
peal to my reader's experience, whether this has never 
happened to him, especially when, busy on one thing, 
he has occasionally reflected on another. I ask him 
whether he has never thus been scared with a sudden 
opinion of mighty difficulties, which yet have van- 
ished, when he has seriously and methodically applied 
himself to the consideration of this seeming terrible 
subject; and there has been no other matter of aston- 
ishment left, but that he amused himself with so dis- 
couraging a prospect of his own raising, about a mat- 
ter which in the handling was found to have nothing 
in it more strange nor intricate than several ot 1 ^ 
things which he had long since, and with ease, n 
tered. This experience would teach us how to deal 
with such bugbears another time, which should rather 
serve to excite our vigor than enervate our industry. 
The surest way for a learner in this, as in all other 
cases, is not to advance by jumps and large strides; 
let that which he sets himself to learn next be indeed 
the next, i. e., as nearly conjoined with what he knows 
already as is possible; let it be distinct, but not remote 
from it ; let it be new, and what he did not know before, 
that the understanding may advance; but let it be 
as little at once as may be, that its advances may be 
clear and sure. All the ground that it gets this way 
it will hold. This distinct gradual growth in knowl- 
edge is firm and sure; it carries its own light with it 



112 CONDUCT OF THE UNDEBSTANDING 

in every step of its progression in an easy and orderly 
train; than which there is nothing of more nse to the 
understanding. And though this perhaps may seem 
a very slow and lingering way to knowledge, yet I dare 
confidently affirm, that whoever will try it in himself, 
or anyone he will teach, shall find the advances greater 
in this method, than they would in the same space of 
time have been in any other he could have taken. The 
greatest part of true knowledge lies in a distinct per- 
ception of things in themselves distinct. And some 
men give more clear light and knowledge by the bare 
distinct stating of a question, than others by talking of 
it in gross, whole hours together. In this, they who 
so state a question, do no more but separate and disen- 
tangle the parts of it one from another, and lay them, 
when so disentangled, in their due order. This often, 
without any more ado, resolves the doubt, and shows 
the mind where the truth lies. The agreement or dis- 
agreement of the ideas in question, when they are once 
separated and distinctly considered, is, in many cases, 
presently received, and thereby clear and lasting knowl- 
edge gained; whereas things in gross taken up to- 
gether, and so lying together in confusion, can pro- 
duce in the mind but a confused, which in effect is no, 
knowledge; or at least, when it comes to be examined 
and made use of, will prove little better than none. 
I therefore take the liberty to repeat here again what 
I have said elsewhere, 1 that in learning anything, as 
little should be proposed to the mind at once as is 
possible; and, that being understood and fully mas- 
tered, to proceed to the next adjoining part, yet un- 

1. Elsewhere. Cf. sections 25 and 28, also "Thoughts con- 
cerning Education," sections 64-66. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 113 

known, simple, unperplexed proposition, 1 belonging 
to the matter in hand, and tending to the clearing what 
is principally designed. 

40. Analogy. — Analogy 2 is of great use to the mind 
in many cases, especially in natural philosophy; and 
that part of it chiefly which consists in happy and suc- 
cessful experiments. But here we must take care that 
we keep ourselves within that wherein the analogy con- 
sists. For example: the acid oil of vitriol is found to 
be good in such a case, therefore the spirit of niter or 
vinegar may be used in the like case. If the good 
effect of it be owing wholly to the acidity of it, the 
trial may be justified; but if there be something else 
besides the acidity in the oil of vitriol, 3 which produces 
the good we desire in the case, we mistake that for 
analogy which is not, and suffer our understanding to 
be misguided by a wrong supposition of analogy where 
there is none. 

41. Association. — Though I have, in the second book 
of my Essay concerning Human Understanding, 4 



1. Unperplexed proposition. This is a most confused sentence. 
It would seem, however, that the expression, " simple unperplexed 
proposition," refers to the "part yet unknown" ; the idea being 
that because of its simplicity it can be easily proved, and so, by de- 
grees, the meaning of the whole be made clear. 

2. Analogy. A form of reasoning in which, from the similarity 
of two or more things in certain particulars, their similarity in 
other particulars is inferred. 

3. Oil of vitriol. This chemical compound is now called sul- 
phuric acid ; spirit of niter, which was also formerly known as 
aqua fortis, is now called nitric acid. 

4. Human Understanding. See Bk. II. ch. xxxiii. This chapter, 
which has had a strong influence on modern philosophy, did not 
appear until the Fourth Edition of the Essay. The doctrine of 
Association, though understood to a certain extent by Hobbes and 



114 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

treated of the association of ideas; yet having done it 
there historically, as giving a view of the "understand- 
ing in this as well as its several other ways of operat- 
ing, rather than designing there to inquire into the 
remedies that ought to be applied to it; it will, under 
this latter consideration, afford other matter of 
thought to those who have a mind to instruct them- 
selves thoroughly in the right way of conducting their 
understandings: and that the rather, because this, if 
I mistake not, is as frequent a cause of mistake and 
error in us as perhaps anything else that can be named ; 
and is a disease of the mind as hard to be cured as 
any, it being a very hard thing to convince anyone that 
things are not so, and naturally so, as they constantly 
appear to him. 

By this one easy and unheeded miscarriage of the 
understanding, sandy and loose foundations become in- 
fallible principles, and will not suffer themselves to be 
touched or questioned; such unnatural connections be- 
come by custom as natural to the mind as sun and 
light, fire and warmth go together, and so seem to 
carry with them as natural an evidence as self-evident 
truths themselves. And where then shall one with 
hopes of success begin the cure? Many men firmly 
embrace falsehood for truth; not only because they 
never thought otherwise, but also because, thus blinded 
as they have been from the beginning, they never could 
think otherwise; at least without a vigor of mind 
able to contest the empire of habit, and look into its 
own principles; a freedom which few men have the 

others of Locke's predecessors, did not form an essential part of 
their philosophy. Locke was the first to bring out the importance 
of the doctrine. 



CONDUCT OF TEE UNDERSTANDING Ho 

notion of in themselves, and fewer are allowed the 
practice of by others; it being the great art and busi- 
ness of the teachers and guides in most sects to sup- 
press, as much as they can, this fundamental duty 
which every man owes himself, and is the first steady 
step toward right and truth in the whole train of his 
actions and opinions. This would give one reason to 
suspect, that such teachers are conscious to themselves 
of the falsehood or weakness of the tenets they pro- 
fess, since they will not suffer the grounds whereon 
they are built to be examined; whereas those who seek 
truth only, 1 and desire to own and propagate nothing 
else, freely expose their principles to the test; are 
pleased to have them examined; give men leave to 
reject them if they can; and if there be anything 
weak and unsound in them, are willing to have it de- 
tected, that they themselves, as well as others, may not 
lay any stress upon any received proposition beyond 
what the evidence of its truths will warrant and allow. 
There is, I know, a great fault among all sorts of 
people of principling their children and scholars; 
which at least, when looked into, amounts to no more 
but making them imbibe their teacher's notions and 

1. Those who seek truth only, etc. Cf. the statements of Soc- 
rates in Plato's " G-orgias " : "But what maimer of man am I? 
Why I am one of those who, when in error, love to be refuted, and 
who have equal delight in refuting the errors of others ; nor is it 
more pleasant to me to refute than to be refuted. On the contrary, 
I account it a greater satisfaction, inasmuch as the advantage is 
greater to be delivered from the extreme of evil, than to deliver 
others ; and truly I consider no evil incident to human nature so 
grievous as to entertain false opinions concerning the subject we 
have here under discussion." Locke says elsewhere : " Whatever I 
write, as soon as I shall discover it not to be truth, my hand shall be 
forwardest to throw it in the fire." 



116 CONDUCT OF TEE UNDERSTANDING 

tenets by an implicit faith, and firmly to adhere to 
them whether true or false. What colors may be given 
to this, or of what use it may be when practiced upon 
the vulgar, destined to labor, and given up to the serv- 
ice of their bellies, I will not here inquire. But as to 
the ingenuous part of mankind, whose condition allows 
them leisure, and letters, and inquiry after truth, I 
can see no other right way of principling them, but to 
take heed, as much as may be, that in their tender 
years, ideas that have no natural cohesion come not to 
be united in their heads; and that this rule be often 
inculcated to them to be their guide in the whole 
course of their lives and studies, viz., that they never 
suffer any ideas to be joined in their understandings 
in any other or stronger combination than what their 
own nature and correspondence give them; and that 
they often examine those that they find linked together 
in their minds, whether this association of ideas be 
from the visible agreement that is in the ideas them- 
selves, or from the habitual and prevailing custom 
of the mind joining them thus together in thinking. 

This is for caution against this evil, before it be 
thoroughly riveted by custom in the understanding ; but 
he that would cure it when habit has established it, 
must nicely observe the very quick and almost imper- 
ceptible motions of the mind in its habitual actions. 
What I have said in another place * about the change 



1. In another place. "Essay on the Human Understanding," 
Bk. II. ch. ix. §§ 8-10. The illustration here given of an idea of 
sense changed into one of judgment is the one suggested to Locke 
by his friend Mr. Molyneux, as to whether a blind man who had 
learned by touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere, would 
know the objects apart if he were suddenly made to see them. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING llV 

of the ideas of sense into those of judgment may be 
proof of this. Let anyone, not skilled in painting, be 
told when he sees bottles and tobacco-pipes, and other 
things so painted, as they are in some places shown, 
that he does not see protuberances, and you will not 
convince him but by the touch ; he will not believe that 
by an instantaneous legerdemain of his own thoughts, 
one idea is substituted for another. How frequent in- 
stances may one meet with of this in the arguings of 
the learned, who not seldom, in two ideas that they 
have been accustomed to join in their minds, substi- 
tute one for the other; and I am apt to think, often 
without perceiving it themselves ! This, whilst they 
are under the deceit of it, makes them incapable of 
conviction, and they applaud themselves as zealous 
champions for truth, when indeed they are contending 
for error. And the confusion of two different ideas, 
which a customary connection of them in their minds 
hath made to them almost one, fills their head with 
false views, and their reasonings with false conse- 
quences. 
42. Fallacies. 1 — Right understanding consists in the 

Locke thought that he would not, but would need experience to 
change the ideas produced by the new sense into those of judg- 
ment. Bishop Berkeley, in his "New Theory of Vision," though 
disagreeing with Locke in this particular illustration, accepts the 
principle and illustrates it by our idea of distance, which is not 
perceived by the senses, but formed by the judgment after repeated 
comparisons of ideas of sense. 

1. Fallacies. A fallacy is an erroneous, false, or deceptive piece 
of reasoning. For a full discussion of this subject, the student 
should consult some book on logic, as, for instance, Mill's " System 
of Logic," Bk. V., Fowler's " Inductive Logic," ch. vi. and his 
"Deductive Logic," Pt. iii. ch. viii. ; also Jevons' " Elementary 
Lessons in Logic." 



118 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

discovery and adherence to truth, and that in the 
perception of the visible or probable agreement or dis- 
agreement of ideas, as they are affirmed and denied 
one of another. From whence it is evident, that the 
right use and conduct of the understanding, whose 
business is purely truth and nothing else, is, that the 
mind should be kept in a perfect indifferency, not in- 
clining to either side, any further than evidence set- 
tles it by knowledge, or the over-balance of probability 
gives it the turn of assent and belief; but yet it is very 
hard to meet with any discourse wherein one may not 
perceive the author not only maintain (for that is rea- 
sonable and fit) but inclined and biased to one side of 
the question, with marks of a desire that that should 
be true. If it be asked me, how authors who have such 
a bias and lean to it may be discovered; I answer, by 
observing how in their writings or arguings they are 
often led by their inclinations to change the ideas of 
the question, either by changing the terms, or by add- 
ing and joining others to them, whereby the ideas 
under consideration are so varied as to be more service- 
able to their purpose, and to be thereby brought to an 
easier and nearer agreement, or more visible and re- 
moter disagreement one with another. This is plain 
and direct sophistry; but I am far from thinking that 
wherever it is found it is made use of with design to 
deceive and mislead the readers. It is visible that 
men's prejudices and inclinations by this way impose 
often upon themselves; and their affection for truth, 
under their prepossession in favor of one side, is the 
very thing that leads them from it. Inclination sug- 
gests and slides into their discourse favorable terms, 
which introduce favorable ideas; till at last by this 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 119 

means that is concluded clear and evident, thus dressed 
up, which, taken in its native state, by making use of 
none but the precise determined ideas, would find no 
admittance at all. The putting these glosses on what 
they affirm, these, as they thought handsome, easy, 
and graceful explications of what they are discours- 
ing on, is so much the character of what is called and 
esteemed writing well, that it is very hard to think 
that authors will ever be persuaded to leave what 
serves so well to propagate their opinions, and procure 
themselves credit in the world, for a more jejune and 
dry way of writing, by keeping to the same terms pre- 
cisely annexed to the same ideas; a sour and blunt 
stiffness tolerable in mathematicians only, who force 
their way, and make truth prevail by irresistible 
demonstration. 

But yet if authors cannot be prevailed with to quit 
the looser, though more insinuating ways of writing; 
if they will not think fit to keep close to truth and in- 
struction by unvaried terms and plain unsophisticated 
arguments; yet it concerns readers not to be imposed 
on by fallacies and the prevailing ways of insinuation. 
To do this, the surest and most effectual remedy is to 
fix in the mind the clear and distinct ideas of the ques- 
tion stripped of words; and so likewise in the train 
of argumentation, to take up the author's ideas, neg- 
lecting his words, observing how they connect or sep- 
arate those in question. He that does this will be able 
to cast off all that is superfluous; he will see what is 
pertinent, what coherent, what is direct to, what slides 
by, the question. This will readily show him all the 
foreign ideas in the discourse, and where they were 
brought in; and though they perhaps dazzled the 



120 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

writer, yet he will perceive that they give no light nor 
strength to his reasonings. 

This, though it be the shortest and easiest way of 
reading books with profit, and keeping one's self from 
being misled by great names or plausible discourses; 
yet it being hard and tedious to those who have not 
accustomed themselves to it, it is not to be expected 
that everyone (amongst those few who really pursue 
truth) should this way guard his understanding from 
being imposed on by the willful, or at least undesigned 
sophistry, which creeps into most of the books of argu- 
ment. They that write against their conviction, or 
that, next to them, are resolved to maintain the tenets 
of a party they were engaged in, cannot be supposed 
to reject any arms that may help to defend their cause, 
and therefore such should be read with the greatest 
caution. And they who write for opinions they are 
sincerely persuaded of and believe to be true, think 
"they may so far allow themselves to indulge their 
laudable affection to truth, as to permit their esteem 
of it to give it the best colors, and set it off with the 
best expressions and dress they can, thereby to gain it 
the easiest entrance into the minds of their readers, 
and fix it deepest there. 

One of those being the state of mind we may justly 
suppose most writers to be in, it is fit their readers, 
who apply to them for instruction, should not lay by 
that caution which becomes a sincere pursuit of truch, 
and should make them always watchful against what- 
ever might conceal or misrepresent it. If they have not 
the skill of representing to themselves the author's 
sense by pure ideas separated from sounds, and thereby 
divested of the false" lights and deceitful ornaments of 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 121 

speech; this yet they should do, they should keep the 
precise question steadily in their minds, carry it along 
with them through the whole discourse, and suffer not 
the least alteration in the terms, either by addition, 
subtraction, or substituting any other. This everyone 
can do who has a mind to it; and he that has not a 
mind to it, it is plain, makes his understanding only 
the warehouse of other men's lumber ; I mean false and 
unconcluding reasonings, rather than a repository of 
truth for his own use, which will prove substantial, and 
stand him in stead, when he has occasion for it. And 
whether such an one deals fairly by his own mind, 
and conducts his own understanding right, I leave to 
his own understanding to judge. 

43. Fundamental Verities.— The mind of man being 
very narrow, and so slow in making acquaintance with 
things, and taking in new truths, that no one man is 
capable, in a much longer life than ours, to know all 
truths, it becomes our prudence, in our search after 
knowledge, to employ our thoughts about fundamental 
and material questions, carefully avoiding those that 
are trifling, and not suffering ourselves to be diverted 
from our main even purpose, by those that are merely 
incidental. How much of many young men's time is 
thrown away in purely logical inquiries x I need not 
mention. This is no better than if a man, who was to 
be a painter, should spend all his time in examining 
the threads of the several cloths he is to paint upon, 

1. Purely logical inquiries. Locke must not here be misunder- 
stood. His criticisms refer to the methods then in vogue in the 
schools and universities, where "useless niceties" were indulged 
in, and not, of course, to the thoughtful analysis of the reasoning 
process. 



122 CONDUCT OF TEE UNDERSTANDING 

and counting the hairs of each pencil and brush he 
intends to use in the laying on of his colors. Nay, it 
is much worse than for a young painter to spend his 
apprenticeship in such useless niceties; for he, at the 
end of all his pains to no purpose, finds that it is not 
painting, nor any help to it, and so is really to no 
purpose; whereas men designed for scholars have 
often their heads so filled and warmed with disputes 
on logical questions, that they take those airy useless 
notions for real and substantial knowledge, and think 
their understandings so well furnished with science, 
that they need not look any further into the nature of 
things, or descend to the mechanical drudgery of ex- 
periment and inquiry. This is so obvious a misman- 
agement of the understanding, and that in the pro- 
fessed way to knowledge, that it could not be passed 
by; to which might be joined abundance of questions, 
and the way of handling of them in the schools. What 
faults in particular of this kind every man is or may 
be guilty of would be infinite to enumerate; it suffices 
to have shown that superficial and slight discoveries, 
and observations that contain nothing of moment in 
themselves, nor serve as clews to lead us into further 
knowledge, should not be thought worth our searching 
after. 

There are fundamental truths that lie at the bottom, 
the basis upon which a great many others rest, and in 
which they have their consistency. These are teem- 
ing truths, rich in store, with which they furnish the 
mind, and, like the lights of heaven, are not only 
beautiful and entertaining in themselves, but give 
light and evidence to other things, that without them 
could not be seen or known. Such is that admirable 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 123 

discovery of Mr. Newton, 1 that all bodies gravitate 
to one another, which may be counted as the basis of 
natural philosophy; which, of what use it is to the 
understanding of the great frame of our solar system, 
he has to the astonishment of the learned world shown ; 
and how much further it would guide us in other 
things, if rightly pursued, is not yet known. Our 
Saviour's great rule, that " we should love our 
neighbor as ourselves," 2 is such a fundamental truth 
for the regulating human society, that I think by that 
alone one might without difficulty determine all the 
cases and doubts in social morality. These and such 
as these are the truths we should endeavor to find out, 
and store our minds with. Which leads me to another 
thing in the conduct of the understanding that is no 
less necessary, viz. 

44. Bottoming. — To accustom ourselves, in any ques- 
tion proposed, to examine and find out upon what it 
bottoms. Most of the difficulties that come in our 
way, when well considered and traced, lead us to some 



1. Mr. Newton. In the " Epistle to the Eeader " that precedes 
the "Essay," Locke says: "The commonwealth of learning is not 
at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs, in 
advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the 
admiration of posterity ; but everyone must not hope to be a 
Boyle or a Sydenham ; and in an age that produces such masters as 
the great Huygenius and the incomparable Mr. Newton, with some 
others of that strain, it is ambition enough to be employed as an 
under-laborer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of 
the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge." Locke met Newton 
after the publication of the <l Essay," and they became close friends. 
The law of gravitation as stated by Newton is that every particle of 
matter attracts every other particle of matter with a force varying 
inversely as the square of the distance. 

2. We should love, etc. Cf. Matt. xxii. 39. 



124 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

proposition, which, known to be true, clears the doubt, 
and gives an easy solution of the question ; whilst topi- 
cal and superficial arguments, 1 of which there is store 
to be found on both sides, filling the head with variety 
of thoughts, and the mouth with copious discourse, 
serve only to amuse the understanding, and entertain 
company, without coming to the bottom of the ques- 
tion, the only place of rest and stability for an in- 
quisitive mind, whose tendency is only to truth and 
knowledge. 

For example, if it be demanded whether the grand 
seignor 2 can lawfully take what he will from any of 
his people? this question cannot be resolved without 
coming to a certainty whether all men are naturally 
equal, for upon that it turns; and that truth well set- 
tled in the understanding, and carried in the mind 
through the various debates concerning the various 
rights of men in society, will go a great way in put- 
ting an end to them, and showing on which side the 
truth is. 

45. Transferring of Thoughts. —There is scarcely any- 
thing more for the improvement of knowledge, for the 
ease of life, and the dispatch of business, than for a 
man to be able to dispose of his own thoughts; and 
there is scarcely anything harder in the whole conduct 
of the understanding than to get a full mastery over 
it. The mind, in a waking man, has always some ob- 
ject that it applies itself to; which, when we are lazy 
or unconcerned, we can easily change, and at pleasure 

1. Topical and superficial arguments. See note 2, page 43. 

2. Grand seignior. Locke's reference here is to the King of 
England. For a discussion of the question here stated, see the 
second of the " Two Treatises of Government." 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 125 

transfer our thoughts to another, and from thence to 
a third, which has no relation to either of the former. 
Hence men forwardly conclude, and frequently say, 
nothing is so free as thought, and it were well it were 
so; but the contrary will be found true in several in- 
stances; and there are many cases wherein there is 
nothing more resty * and ungovernable than our 
thoughts; they will not be directed what objects to 
pursue, nor be taken off from those they have once 
fixed on, but run away with a man in pursuit of those 
ideas they have in view, let him do what he can. 

I will not here mention again what I have above 2 
taken notice of, how hard it is to get the mind, nar- 
rowed by a custom of thirty or forty years' standing 
to a scanty collection of obvious and common ideas, 
to enlarge itself to a more copious stock, and grow into 
an acquaintance with those that would afford more 
abundant matter of useful contemplation; it is not of 
this I am here speaking. The inconveniency I would 
here represent, and find a remedy for, is the difficulty 
there is sometimes to transfer our minds from one sub- 
ject to another, in cases where the ideas are equally 
familiar to us. 

Matters that are recommended to our thoughts by 
any of our passions, 3 take possession of our minds 

1. Resty. An obsolete form of restive. 

2. Above. See section 9, on Ideas. 

3. By any of our passions. Cf. Bacon, "Novum Organum," 
Bk. I. Aph. 49: "The human understanding is no dry light, but 
receives an infusion from the will and affections ; whence proceed 
sciences which may be called 'sciences as one would.' For what a 
man had rather were true he more readily believes. Therefore he 
rejects difficult things from impatience of research ; sober things, 
because they narrow hope ; the deeper things of nature, from 



126 CONDUCT OF THE UNDEBSTANDING 

with a kind of authority, and will not be kept out or 
dislodged ; but, as if the passion that rules were for the 
time the sheriff of the place, and came with all the 
posse, 1 the understanding is seized and taken with 
the object it introduces, as if it had a legal right to 
be alone considered there. There is scarcely anybody 
I think of so calm a temper who hath not some time 
found this tyranny on his understanding, and suffered 
under the inconvenience of it. Who is there almost 
whose mind, at some time or other, love or anger, fear 
or grief, has not so fastened to some clog that it could 
not turn itself to any other object? I call it a clog, 
for it hangs upon the mind so as to hinder its vigor 
and activity in the pursuit of other contemplations; 
and advances itself little or not at all in the knowl- 
edge of the thing which it so closely hugs and con- 
stantly pores on. Men thus possessed are sometimes as 
if they were so in the worse sense, and lay under the 
power of an enchantment. They see not what passes 
before their eyes, hear not the audible discourse of the 
company, and when by any strong application to them 
they are roused a little, they are like men brought to 
themselves from some remote region; whereas in truth 



superstition ; the light of experience, from arrogance and pride, 
lest his mind should seem to be occupied with things mean and 
transitory ; things not commonly believed, out of deference to the 
opinion of the vulgar. Numberless in short are the ways, and 
sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections color and infect 
the understanding." 

1. Posse. Posse comitatus. The word comitatus is often 
omitted. Literally, the power of the county. In law, the body of 
men that a sheriff is empowered to call into service to aid and sup- 
port him in the execution of the law. In general, a body or squad 
of men. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 127 

they come no further than their secret cabinet within, 
where they have been wholly taken up with the puppet, 
which is for that time appointed for their entertain- 
ment. The shame that such dumps cause to well-bred 
people, when it carries them away from the company, 
where they should bear a part in the conversation, is 
a sufficient argument that it is a fault in the conduct 
of our understanding not to have that power over it 
as to make use of it to those purposes and on those 
occasions wherein we have need of its assistance. The 
mind should be always free and ready to turn itself 
to the variety of objects that occur, and allow them 
as much consideration as shall for that time be thought 
fit. To be engrossed so by one object as not to be pre- 
vailed on to leave it for another that we judge fitter 
for our contemplation, is to make it of no use to us. 
Did this state of mind remain always so, everyone 
would, without scruple, give it the name of perfect 
madness; and whilst it does last, at whatever intervals 
it returns, such a rotation of thoughts about the same 
object no more carries us forward towards the attain- 
ment of knowledge, than getting upon a mill-horse 
whilst he jogs on in his circular track would carry a 
man a journey. 

I grant something must be allowed to legitimate pas- 
sions and to natural inclinations. Every man, besides 
occasional affections, has beloved studies, and those the 
mind will more closely stick to; but yet it is best that 
it should be always at liberty, and under the free dis- 
posal of the man, and to act how and upon what he 
directs. This we should endeavor to obtain unless we 
would be content with such a flaw in our understand- 





128 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

ing, that sometimes we should be, as it were, without 
it; for it is very little better than so in cases where 
we cannot make use of it to those purposes we would, 
and which stand in present need of it. 

But before fit remedies can be thought on for this 
disease we must know the several causes of it, and 
thereby regulate the cure, if we will hope to labor with 
success. 

One we have already instanced in, whereof all men 
that reflect have so general a knowledge, and so often 
an experience in themselves, that nobody doubts of it. 
A prevailing passion so pins down our thoughts to the 
object and concern of it, that a man passionately in 
love cannot bring himself to think of his ordinary 
affairs, or a kind mother drooping under the loss of 
a child, is not able to bear a part as she was wont in 
the discourse of the company or conversation of her 
friends. 

But though passion be the most obvious and general, 
yet it is not the only cause that binds up the under- 
standing, and confines it for the time to one object, 
from which it will not be taken off. 

Besides this, we may often find that the understand- 
ing, when it has a while employed itself upon a sub- 
ject which either chance or some slight accident of- 
fered to it, without the interest or recommendation of 
any passion, works itself into a warmth, and by degrees 
gets into a career, wherein, like a bowl down a hill, 
it increases its motion by going, and will not be stopped 
or diverted; though, when the heat is over, it sees all 
this earnest application was about a trifle not worth a 
thought, and all the pains employed about it lost 
labor. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 1291 

There is a third sort, 1 if I mistake not, yet lower 
than this; it is a sort of childishness, if I may so say, 
of the understanding, wherein, during the fit, it plays 
with and dandles some insignificant puppet to no end, 
nor with any design at all, and yet cannot easily be got 
off from it. Thus some trivial sentence, or a scrap 
of poetry, will sometimes get into men's heads, and 
make such a chiming there, that there is no stilling of 
it; no peace to be obtained, nor attention to anything 
else, but this impertinent guest will take up the mind 
and possess the thoughts in spite of all endeavors to 
get rid of it. Whether everyone hath experimented 2 
in themselves this troublesome intrusion of some frisk- 
ing ideas which thus importune the understanding, 
and hinder it from being better employed, I know not. 
But persons of very good parts, and those more than 
one, I have heard speak and complain of it themselves. 
The reason I have to make this doubt, is from what I 
have known in a case something of kin to this, though 
much odder, and that is of a sort of visions that some 
people have lying quiet, but perfectly awake, in the dark, 
or with their eyes shut. It is a great variety of faces, 
most commonly very odd ones, that appear to them in 
a train one after another; so that having had just 
the sight of the one, it immediately passes away to 
give place to another, that the same instant succeeds, 
and has as quick an exit as its leader; and so they 
march on in a constant succession; nor can any one of 



1. A third sort, etc. Mr. Forster, in his preface to " Original 
Letters of Locke, Sidney, and Shaftesbury," states that Locke him- 

^lf was subject to experiences similar to those described in this 
paragraph. 

2. Experimented. Experienced. 



130 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

them by any endeavor be stopped or restrained beyond 
the instant of its appearance, but is thrust out by its 
follower, which will have its turn. Concerning this 
fantastical phenomenon I have talked with several peo- 
ple, whereof some have been perfectly acquainted with 
it, and others have been so wholly strangers to it that 
they could hardly be brought to conceive or believe 
it. I knew a lady of excellent parts, who had got past 
thirty without having ever had the least notice of any 
such thing; she was so great a stranger to it, that 
when she heard me and another talking of it, could 
scarcely forbear thinking we bantered her; but some 
time after, drinking a large dose of dilute tea (as she 
was ordered by a physician) going to bed, she told us 
at next meeting, that she had now experimented what 
our discourse had much ado to persuade her of. She 
had seen a great variety of faces in a long train, suc- 
ceeding one another, as we had described; they were 
all strangers and intruders, such as she had no ac- 
quaintance with before, nor sought after then; and as 
they came of themselves, they went too; none of them 
stayed a moment, nor could be detained by all the en- 
deavors she could use, but went on in their solemn pro- 
cession, just appeared and then vanished. This odd 
phenomenon seems to have a mechanical cause, and 
to depend upon the matter and motion of the blood or 
animal spirits. 

When the fancy is bound by passion, I know no way 
to set the mind free and at liberty to prosecute what 
thoughts the man would make choice of, but to allay 
the present passion, or counterbalance it with another; 
which is an art to be got by study, and acquaintance 
with the passions. 



CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

XTURE 

Those who find themselves apt to be carried awl^ 
with the spontaneous current of their own thoughts,^id 
not excited by any passion or interest, must be very 
wary and careful in all the instances of it to stop it, 
and never humor their minds in being thus triflingly 
busy. Men know the value of their corporeal liberty, 
and therefore suffer not willingly fetters and chains to 
be put upon them. To have the mind captivated is, for 
the time, certainly the greater evil of the two, and de- 
serves our utmost care and endeavors to preserve the 
freedom of our better part. In this case our pains 
will not be lost; striving and struggling will prevail, 
if we constantly on all such occasions make use of it. 
We must never indulge these trivial attentions of 
thought; as soon as we find the mind makes itself the 
business of nothing, we should immediately disturb 
and check it, introduce new and more serious consid- 
erations, and not leave till we have beaten it off from 
the pursuit it was upon. This, at first, if we have let 
the contrary practice grow to a habit, will perhaps be 
difficult ; but constant endeavors will by degrees prevail, 
and at last make it easy. And when a man is pretty 
well advanced, and can command his mind off at pleas- 
ure from incidental and undesigned pursuits, it may 
not be amiss for him to go on further, and make at- 
tempts upon meditations of greater moment, that at 
the last he may have a full power over his own mind, 
and be so fully master of his own thoughts as to be 
able to transfer them from one subject to another, with 
the same ease that he can lay by anything he has in 
his hand, and take something else that he has a mind 
to in the room of it. This liberty of mind is of great 
use both in business and study, and he that has got it 



._ 



130 

10NDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

have no small advantage of ease and dispatch in 
r all that is the chosen and useful employment of his 
understanding. 

The third and last way which I mentioned the mind 
to be sometimes taken up with, I mean the chiming 
of some particular words or sentence in the memory, 
and, as it were, making a noise in the head, and the 
like, seldom happens but when the mind is lazy, or very 
loosely and negligently employed. It were better in- 
deed to be without such impertinent and useless repeti- 
tions: any obvious idea, when it is roving carelessly at 
a venture, being of more use, and apter to suggest 
something worth consideration, than the insignificant 
buzz of purely empty sounds. But since the rousing 
of the mind, and setting the understanding on work 
with some degree of vigor, does for the most part pres- 
ently set it free from these idle companions, it may not 
be amiss whenever we find ourselves troubled with 
them, to make use of so profitable a remedy that is 
always at hand. 



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GRADED UTERATURE READERS 

EDITED BY 

HARRY PRATT JUDSON, LL.DL 

DEAN OF THE FACULTIES OFARTS.LITERATURE.AND SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 

AND 

IDA C.BENDER 

SUPERVISOR OF PRIMARY GRADES IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF BUFFALO, NEW YORK 

By virtue of their perfect grading and rare 
literary quality Judson & Bender's Graded Lit- 
erature Readers are admirably adapted for sup- 
plemental readers, but they are first and foremost 



A BASAL, SERIES OF READING BOOKS 

The prices of the Graded Literature Readers 
i jare as follows : 

First Book, 128 pages, 25 cents 

Second Book, 202 pages, 40 cents 

Third Book, 232 pages, 45 cents 

Fourth Book, 262 pages, 50 cents 

Fifth Book, 262 pages, 50 cents 

Sixth Book, 256 pages, 50 cents 

For special terms for introduction and ex- 
change, please address the publishers. 

MAYNARD, MERRILL, & CO , Publishers 

29, 31, and 33 East 19TH Street, New York 



SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

THE YOUNG AMERICAN 

A CIVIC READER 
By HARRY PRATT JUDSON, LL.D. 

Head Professor of Political Science in the University of Chicago 



The plan of the book is to afford exercise in reading and 
at the same time to give to young pupils not going beyond the 
grammar school a good knowledge of the structure and working 
of our government; to make clear to them at what a tremen- 
dous cost that government was formed and established ; and to 
fix in their minds through the words of our great poets and 
statesmen the principles that should govern us as a people. 

" It is a timely book. " New occasions teach new duties, 
and the one duty nearest at hand, in view of the stirring events 
of our recent history, is to inspire young pupils with a deep 
love for our country. •» ry a 

244 pages, i2mo. Introduction price, 60 cents. 

FOR DESCRIPTIVE CIRCULAR, TERMS 
AND OTHER INFORMATION, ADDRESS 

MAYNARD, MERRILL, & CO., Publishers 

29, 31, and 33 East 19TH Street, New York 



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Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 



Treatment Date: August 2004 



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